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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."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @12:51PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @12:51PM (#994968)

    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)

    by Unixnut (5779) on Saturday May 16 2020, @01:19PM (#994974)

    > 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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @11:10PM (#995173)

      What will be lost is alternative ideas being exposed to the masses.

      Like alt-right ideas? What a loss for those masses.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2020, @12:53AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2020, @12:53AM (#995193)

        I'm progressive! Censorship couldn't possibly affect me!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2020, @09:00AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2020, @09:00AM (#995284)

          Course not. The progressives aren't alt.

      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 19 2020, @01:18AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday May 19 2020, @01:18AM (#996116) Journal

        Like alt-right ideas? What a loss

        "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.