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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @03:03PM (4 children)
There's a direct connection between hate speech and genocide. The question of which leads to which is left as an exercise for the reader.
Nazis are the most obvious group - their philosophy (and they do have one, however incoherent) is a clear and present danger to anyone not a Nazi. The modern rebranding under "alt-right" doesn't change that. Hate speech isn't "just an opinion", it's preemptive support for human rights abuses.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @04:01PM
Any speech I don't like is hate speech.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday May 16 2020, @04:25PM
The correct way to incite and perpetrate large scale violence (and get away with it) is to rebrand it as "fighting terrorism", "peace keeping", or "protecting national interests".
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @05:59PM (1 child)
no, you brainwashed fuck, "Nazi" is a Jew contrived slur against Aryans who dared defend themselves against the Bolshevik Jew subversives who refused to gtfo and had already staged revolutions. These hate speech laws are being pushed by treasonous politicians who are bringing in third world populations to breed out the white natives. These laws are used to reduce opposition. Once again The International Jew is to blame. All the NGOs bringing the third world refugees in are Jewish and it ts The International Jew organized criminal pushing their slave states (USA, UK, etc) to start wars in these third world countries in the first place to destroy the remaining Aryan countries(what is left of them), breed out the remaining white people and create the Greater Israel. "Hate Speech"(no such thing. just more Jew propaganda) is justified and a real holocaust (this time) is in order.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2020, @01:59AM
Oy vey, what a putz!