Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday May 16 2020, @02:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the freedom-of-speech-is-not-free dept.

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."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by darkfeline on Saturday May 16 2020, @09:19AM (1 child)

    by darkfeline (1030) on Saturday May 16 2020, @09:19AM (#994931) Homepage

    I don't think they *want* these laws, even if they could potentially be in a position to benefit from them. It's still a huge legal and financial liability since there's no solid definition for what constitutes "hate".

    Facebook/Google don't have an incentive to censor anything, except insofar as their users demand that they censor things. If not censoring things meant more users, more engagement, more cash, and less expense, why the hell would they do it?

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=2, Disagree=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @06:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @06:02PM (#995082)

    "Facebook/Google don't have an incentive to censor anything"

    oh please wake the fuck up! They are run by International Jews and they share the same masters and their goals.