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Failure to delete hate speech could cost Facebook, Google billions in France
Lawmakers in France this week passed a controversial new law that could impose billions in fines on social media companies that fail to delete certain kinds of content quickly enough—within an hour, in some cases.
The new legislation (page in French) gives online platforms 24 hours from notification to remove certain kinds of content or else face fines.
Content subject to enforcement under the law includes: sexual harassment; child pornography; anything that promotes certain crimes; anything that promotes discrimination, hate, or violence; anything that denies crimes against humanity; and promotion of terrorism. The window for removing content related to child pornography or terrorism is shorter, only one hour.
A company that fails to remove such content within the correct time limit after being notified of it can be fined €1.25 million ($1.35 million). If a regulatory board finds a company is not meeting its obligations, it can impose a maximum fine equal to 4 percent of that company's annual global revenue.
The BBC notes:
Digital rights group La Quadrature du Net said the requirement to take down content that the police considered "terrorism" in just one hour was impractical.
"Except the big companies, nobody can afford to have a 24/7 watch to remove the content when requested," a spokesman for the group said. "Hence, they will have to rely on censorship before receiving a request from the police."
That might be in the form of using an automatic system provided by the largest companies, giving them "more power on what can exist on the web or not".
But there are also fears that such tech could be used against groups such as protesters.
"Since 2015, we already had such a law that allowed the police to ask for the removal of some content if they deemed it to be terrorist... this has been used multiple times in France to censor political content," the spokesman said.
"Giving the police such a power, without any control... is obviously for us an infringement on the freedom of speech."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MostCynical on Saturday May 16 2020, @05:23AM
your optimism at others being willing to carefully, rationally consider and debate opposing ideas and even be swayed to change their minds is undone by evidence from every comment section in youtube, facebook and online news sites, and even much of SN.
This is the internet; thinking is optional, if not actively discouraged.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex