French
lawmakers vote to target online hate speech in draft bill
REUTERS, WORLD
NEWS JULY 5, 2019 / 5:51 PM / Mathieu Rosemain, Elizabeth Pineau
PARIS
(Reuters) - Social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter would be required
to remove any hateful content within 24 hours under a draft bill approved by
France’s National Assembly on Friday.
President
Emmanuel Macron wants to make France a leader in regulating U.S. tech giants
and containing the spread of illicit content and false information on the
most-used platforms.
“What
is not tolerated on the street should not be tolerated on the internet,” said
Laetitia Avia, a member of Macron’s majority at the National Assembly and
author of a recent report on hate speech told reporters before the vote.
Facebook
has come under intense scrutiny in recent years over hate speech, especially after
a gunman killed 51 people in New Zealand in March and streamed the attack live.
The
massacre prompted the country’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern to initiate a
so-called “Christchurch Call,” named after the city where the gunman attacked
two mosques.
Facebook,
which was not immediately reachable for comment, has recently agreed to hand
over the identification data of users suspected of hate speech on its platform
to judges in France, a minister told Reuters last week.
It
has also restricted rules for broadcasting live video on its platform after the
killings at Christchurch.
Under
the French draft law, social media groups would have to put in place tools to
allow users to alert them to “clearly illicit” content related to race, gender,
religion, sexual orientation or disability.
In
the event a network fails to react in due course and/or offer the necessary
means to report such content, they could face fines up to 4% of their global
revenues.
France’s
broadcasting regulator, CSA, would be responsible for imposing the sanctions
and a dedicated prosecutor’s office would be created.
The French bill looks more draconian
than the one passed in 2018 in Germany, under which local authorities can
impose fines of up to 50 million euros ($56 million) on sites that fail to
remove hate speech promptly.
DEJA VU
Several
internet and freedom of speech advocacy groups questioned have argued the bill
paves the way for state censorship because it does not clearly define illicit
content.
Insults,
slurs and racist comments proliferate today on social networks. Under the law,
it would be up to Facebook, Twitter and video streaming platform YouTube to
swiftly remove the content, pushing them to be zealous, advocacy groups say.
“Imposing
a 24-hour limit to remove clearly unlawful content is likely to result in
significant restrictions on freedoms, such as the overblocking of lawful
comments or the misuse of the measure for political censorship purposes,” said
Quadrature du Net, a group that advocates free speech on the internet.
The
group also highlighted that a law adopted in 2004 already demanded the removal
of hateful content, but in a “responsive” way, leaving enough time to platforms
for assessing the seriousness of the content under review.
“The assessment of the illegality of hate
content cannot be left to platform operators alone...,” France’s Human Rights
League said in a statement before Friday’s vote.
“We
warn against circumventing the powers of the judicial authorities in favor of
the independent administrative authorities,” it added.
In
France, the head of the CSA is named by the president.
The
bill now passes to the senate and will go back and forth between the two houses
until they both agree on the text. If they fail to do so, the lower house will
have the final word.
Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain and Elizabeth
Pineau; Editing by Alexander Smith
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