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Communications Government Social Networks The Internet

France Passes Law Forcing Online Platforms To Delete Hate-Speech Content Within 24 Hours (techcrunch.com) 242

France's lower chamber has passed a controversial law that will require social networks and online platforms remove flagged hate speech within 24 hours. If companies do not comply, they will have to pay hefty fines every time they infringe the law. Other more extreme content, such as terrorist content and child pornography, will require online platforms react within an hour. TechCrunch reports: While online hate speech has been getting out of control, many fear that online platforms will censor content a bit too quickly. Companies don't want to risk a fine so they might delete content that doesn't infringe the law just because they're not sure. Essentially, online platforms have to regulate themselves. The government then checks whether they're doing a good job or not. "It's just like banking regulators. They check that banks have implemented systems that are efficient, and they audit those systems. I think that's how we should think about it," France's digital minister Cedric O told me in an interview last year.

There are multiple levels of fines. It starts at hundreds of thousand of euros but it can reach up to 4% of the global annual revenue of the company with severe cases. The Superior Council of the Audiovisual (CSA) is the regulator in charge of those cases. Germany has already passed similar regulation and there are ongoing discussions at the European Union level.

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France Passes Law Forcing Online Platforms To Delete Hate-Speech Content Within 24 Hours

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  • by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @05:07AM (#60062542)
    n/t?
    • Personally I wanna see what happens when I start flagging all comments from official French government accounts as hate speech.

      • by Avoiderman ( 82105 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @05:36AM (#60062588)

        They'll look at the first couple, then effectively mute your account as a pointless time waster? That'd be my guess.

        • by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @08:32AM (#60063006) Homepage Journal
          Yep...likely the case.

          Geez, there is NO hate speech, there is just SPEECH.

          If you are inciting violence, etc, that's a completely different thing.

          Libel and Slander are different things.

          .....But speech is just speech.

          You may not like it...you don't have to listen to or read it.

          But it is a dangerous game to have someone in charge (who would this be?) saying this speech is banned and this is ok?

          Talk about the slippery slope.

          • There is speech that's genuinely problematic such as shouting fire in a crowded theatre. We're all aware of that but also that is an obvious example. Typically we see in practice that real life examples are much more vague.

            I routinely see speech suppressed online under the guise of things such as hate speech and most of the time it's not. It's political censorship.

            The irony is the thing that incited feelings of genocidal rage, angry, disgust and unrelenting hate in me is when exposed to heavy handed p
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @05:46AM (#60062600) Homepage Journal

        How addicted are French politicians to Twitter? I seem to recall that Macron came out of nowhere in a couple of years in no small part because of his online campaign.

        Just block reported content in France immediately with a note stating that French law requires it, and then add it to a queue for review. Have one part time person reviewing the queue in between their other jobs. See how long tweet addicted politicians last.

        • by lgw ( 121541 )

          Because the last thing we need is a voting public the knows what politicians actually think? Because we want to keep a system where all you know about both sides is what the gatekeeper media tells you?

          Twitter, censored and biased as it is, has been a blessing for democracy because thus far it's been less censored and biased than the news. Whatever you think of Trump, you can base that on what he actually says instead of basing in on what he's reported to say.

          • "a system where all you know about both sides"

            Um, are French and German politics dominated by two parties? I really didn't look to see, but I recall at least some past activity by third parties in Germany, and France is, well, France.

            • It seems to me... yeah. It essentially boils down to globalist (liberal capitalism) vs anti-globalist (nationalist) no matter how many parties you create. In the US these forces are dispersed into only two parties each having about half of what the American people might actually want.
      • Please do.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Same thing that happens when Facebook goes down at 5:01 PM on Friday, everyone gets the weekend off.

  • by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @05:20AM (#60062572) Journal

    The state must maintain order at all costs?

  • Dear France (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 )

    We are sorry to inform you that you cannot access our social media platform anymore from IP addresses that reside under French jurisdiction.

    In completely unrelated news, we have created a VPN provider. It's free to use, though it only allows access to our social media platform...

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Maybe that's the plan. Lots of people would like to see Facebook gone, either because it's awful or because they could do without the competition.

    • Why do that? Instead, just don't have offices, employees, or assets there. It's easier to remain out of reach than to actually block everyone, and the latter is too censorious to be tolerated (no one does this on behalf of Iran or China; they at least make the local regime handle its own attempts at censorship).

    • Re:Dear France (Score:4, Insightful)

      by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @06:11AM (#60062650)

      you cannot access our social media platform anymore from IP addresses that reside under French jurisdiction

      ...and nothing of value was lost? Come to think of it, couldn't they expand it beyond France?

  • The article that we just linked to has a lot of opinion rolled into it. Yeah, there are obvious downsides of this, but is this legislation really doing exactly what the article says? They didn't link to the legislation at all, so it's hard to determine from there what it is really aiming to do (or not do). Even more so we're trusting this write up to have a proper grasp of what the French government defines to be "hate speech" - which we know is an exceptionally difficult term to reach a consensus defini
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      Basically anything on a forum could be called hate speech by someone. Even on knitting sites. All forums must be taken down!
  • by Sumguy2436 ( 6186944 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @06:16AM (#60062658)

    There were several better articles with more information on the firehose for some time. The one that gets posted completely glosses over the criticism of yet another censorship law.

    The other articles from the firehose:

    https://www.dw.com/en/france-passes-disputed-law-on-online-hate-speech/a-53429587

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52664609

  • Whose opinion as to what is hate speech wins for all this? I despise the French legislators morons for passing such an oops we did expect that happen kind of law, they are dangerous fascists. So is that last sentence hate speech to be removed?!
  • The biggest problem with laws like this is the definition of "hate" speech. There is a huge range of speech, from unpalatable truths through incitement of violence. Exactly where do you draw the line? And who gets to draw it?

    If the censorship is implemented by the government, for example, by approving or disallowing specific demonstrations, then at least voters have indirect control. However, requiring private corporations to implement censorship, based solely on vague guidelines? Those corporations are not

  • Block France from the Internet.
    Costs less than they'll lose attempting to comply with this stupidity, not to mention it's unamerican to comply with such fascism.
  • Protect say the poor POC from white nationalists on line by law sounds great. What happens when new French govt puts in new judges that then interpret this law that calling out white nationalists is hate speech? That attacking dear leader is hate speech? If next Hitler is elected in France she has the laws she needs already.
  • Oh how I HATE FRANCE! Every person from France is EVIL!!!! ...
    so,, now what? This post must be deleted?

  • 4% of the global annual revenue of the company

    This is the sort of thing that might actually be cheaper to pay the fine or disallow French IPs than to actually follow the law.

  • Good thing we all agree on what "hate speech" is! Oh, wait ...
  • by JoeyDot ( 5981942 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @09:21AM (#60063238)
    France is doing great living up to it's reputation.

    I could come up with a reasonable definition of hate speech. I could come up with a reasonable definition of most things.

    In practice broadly across the internet, many other places and sometimes even in law I've seen it applied to shut down political dissent.

    It is also often very unevenly applied. For example, hate speech against a majority ethnicity will be tolerate but not the other way around. Often truth is considered hate speech if it's on the wrong side.

    Traditionally, while hate speech was a tool for oppression by authoritarian regimes, in the west it was often considered that if implemented the bar should be high. There are areas where people can combine lies, defamation or misrepresentation with influence and a call to action that can be problematic though these are very rare. These are cases that would be a bit like shouting fire in a theatre.

    Some descriptions of the law are very dangerous because they apparently not only refer to hate speech but also racism or religious bigotry. If this is true then it's very problematic because the label racism gets slapped on anything these days including being against certain political policies such as mass immigration.

    I'm not a fan of religion but religious people should have the right to express themselves and based on how other terms are abused all I see here is a communist decree.
  • by Voice of satan ( 1553177 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @09:21AM (#60063240)

    Not only the concept of regulating speech ridiculous (but very European, censorship is a popular concept there. Not only in France) but the French definition of hate speech is VERY wide

    A (bad) humorist was condemned in France for making a satirical song against a far right party. And the judge knew it was a parody.

    A French politician was condemned by joking "one is okay, it's when there are lots of them you have problems".

    So, if you say there are too many Mexicans in the U.S. Bam ! Hate speech according to French law ! You don't need to actually hate anyone.

    In the same spirit rejoicing over terrorist murders can land you in jail in France. While it's assholey, it's opinion stuff. And the French CSA are the guys paid to track penises on TV, not exactly intellectuals.

    And worry not, such measures are quite popular there.

  • Given there's the choice between supporting the rights and protections for the innocent that are persecuted as a result of hate speech and disinformation, or supporting the right to post hate speech and disinformation one would think that good moral thinking would hopefully prevail. I'm always amazed at how Americans are so quick to run to the aid of supporting the latter. In what way could this be making society better? It's sad to see at the very least.

    Although what I do find amusing is that many of the
  • by Hey_Jude_Jesus ( 3442653 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @09:39AM (#60063332)
    Who defines hate speech? is it some faceless bureaucrat?
  • And who gets to define it?
    Could a future government (perhaps for political or foreign policy reasons) declare that the sort of content that lead to the attack on that french newspaper a few years back is now "hate speech" and not allowed?

    Also, what happens if Google and Facebook and others decide to not have any offices, staff or business in France in order to not be subject to French laws (including this one and the one about paying publishers for content). Would France really block all of YouTube if it do

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