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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: 4, Insightful) by Unixnut on Saturday May 16 2020, @11:25AM (8 children)
As subject, the "web" will fracture if this goes through, for the simple reason that there is no unified definition of "Hate". Hell, most of the time you can't get humans to even agree on what actually happened (anyone who has tried to study history, has found usually multiple conflicting "histories" are available, depending on who you ask), and even to this day the world has not managed to agree on what the current country borders look like (different countries have different maps, with different borders).
Even within a country you have no clear definition of what is hate speech, so the best you can get is whatever that countries rulers define as "hate", but even that is not globally universal.
For example: anti-homosexuality posts are considered hate speech in most of the liberal west, while pro-homosexuality posts are considered hate speech (blasphemy) in most Islamic societies.
Web companies are global, if they want to succeed in every market, they have a choice, either they globally apply everyone's "hate speech" definition (which will result in them banning pretty much everything people post about), or (more likely) they will tailor their service to each country/region.
This means that what is permissible on , say, Facebook, would vary based on what country you are posting from, and who can see it. The only way this would work is if cross-border communication is prevented, otherwise people can just view the "hate speech" that was posted outside their country.
Up until recently, big US companies just followed what the US defined as hate speech, and the rest of the world could lump it. However, with more of the world fining them, or even restricting their ability to function (e.g. China), they have to change in order to stay the market leader.
By the end of this, we will have a bunch of "regional" webs, running on a global infrastructure (at least for the moment, even that may fade with time).
Ironically, the "dark web" may well end up being what the original internet was, a "global village" with the free exchange of information, but it will also be restricted from the masses, due to the criminal actions of the few that make accessing it a crime (or at least a reason to be further investigated and monitored).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @12:51PM (5 children)
I'm not sure anything of value will be lost. You can easily get around court-ordered site blocks, and if the tech giants with actual offices in the EU cabitchulate to laws like these, that's just more power to alternatives and decentralized platforms. On that note, has anyone tried Lokinet?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Saturday May 16 2020, @01:19PM (4 children)
> I'm not sure anything of value will be lost.
What will be lost is alternative ideas being exposed to the masses. This is quite dangerous IMO. One of the reasons world wars were able to carry on for as long as they did is due to the masses of each side being kept in the dark of the truth. With the increasing penetration of the internet, it has been harder for countries to wage war or commit atrocities without their respective populations finding out, reducing support for the war. Examples are many, including the work of Wikileaks, etc...
The powers that be would love to bring the internet to heel, so it becomes little more than a glorified TV system, with an echo chamber they suitably manage to get the outcome they desire.
Yes, the free exchange of information results in "hate speech" being seen, along with all kinds of "alternative ideas" and some scams which might be dangerous to the readers, but that is the price of freedom, having to think for yourself rather than let others think for you.
> You can easily get around court-ordered site blocks,
You probably can, as I probably could, along with most of this site. However we are a minority, and that is for now, while the internet itself is still global.
I suspect that for the moment the internet will remain global, as economies of scale work in favour of the web behemoths , but that may change in future.
> and if the tech giants with actual offices in the EU cabitchulate to laws like these, that's just more power to alternatives and decentralized platforms.
Only if they have enough critical mass to succeed. "Diaspora" was slated as an open source, decentralised competitor to Facebook, and where did that go? What good are having alternatives if the majority of users are not there?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @11:10PM (3 children)
Like alt-right ideas? What a loss for those masses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2020, @12:53AM (1 child)
I'm progressive! Censorship couldn't possibly affect me!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2020, @09:00AM
Course not. The progressives aren't alt.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 19 2020, @01:18AM
"Alt-right ideas"? That's an chloroxymoron! It is like, oh, "stategic communication", or "Italian driving lessons", or "Microsoft Help". There are no ideas, just the "alt", for the lulz, to stick it to the libs. Old school principled racist conservatives [democracyjournal.org], like George Will, or even William F. Buckley, Jr, are no longer even cool.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @01:59PM (1 child)
But then they opened business offices in the EU to reap some Euros or hire their people or build a data center, and they became subject to their laws. If free speech was so important to them, they could close their foreign offices and exist under US law. I don't think the EU will cut themselves off the US Internet.
Unlike the US, the EU members don't have the pull to get execs extradited. People have been prosecuted and jailed in the EU for what they published in the US, but they weren't captains of industry and they travelled themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2020, @09:07AM
EU population - 514.40 Million
US population - 328.2 million
Guess were are the most eyeballs for ads?