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INTERNET

French parliament adopts controversial online hate speech bill

French lawmakers on Wednesday approved a controversial bill to ban hate speech on social media, a measure dismissed as censorship by detractors.

French parliament adopts controversial online hate speech bill
The bill was adopted by a show of hands in the lower house National Assembly. Photo: AFP

The law obliges platforms and search engines to remove offensive content – incitement to hate or violence and racist or religious bigotry – within 24 hours or risk a fine of up to €1,25 million.

The bill was adopted by a show of hands in the lower house National Assembly. Right-wing parties voted against while socialists mainly abstained.

It had in February passed through the upper house senate, where senators
had registered their opposition to the 24-hour rule.

Critics say the proposal will make Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple the custodians of freedom of expression.

READ ALSO: What you should know about France's new online hate speech bill

The law was the first with no link to the ongoing coronavirus emergency to be voted on in the National Assembly, where President Emmanuel Macron's party holds a majority, since the epidemic hit France.

An extension of Macron's vow to battle racism and anti-Semitism propagated via the internet, the bill was first submitted to parliament over a year ago.

It has since been amended several times in response to criticism and comments, including from the European Commission which demanded a clearer definition of what kind of content would be criminalised.

The draft has drawn criticism from watchdog bodies in France that have expressed concerns over potential violations of the right to freely express oneself on the world wide web.

Digital companies are worried about fines or legal battles that may result from the new onus placed on them to determine what content violates the bill, and then withdraw it within the given timeframe.

In another controversy, Laetitia Avia, the MP from Macron's party who proposed the bill, has faced accusations by the Mediapart online newspaper of “repeatedly humiliating” five former staff members and using sexist, homophobic and racist language.

She has denounced the accusations as “lies” and said that she will sue for libel.

Member comments

  1. It is a good step forward in forcing the digital giants to take responsibility for what is peddled over their platforms. Having reported very clear, targeted racist/incitement to violence posts on Facebook, only to be informed that they ‘did not breach community standards’, I do hope that this measure will force them to take the issue more seriously.

  2. It’s just another form of censorship of the “net” by people with a chip on their shoulder against large media platforms. These people manage to suck the life out of everything they don’t agree with.

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TECH

Cookie fight: Austrian activist in tough online privacy fight

Five years after Europe enacted sweeping data protection legislation, prominent online privacy activist Max Schrems says he still has a lot of work to do as tech giants keep dodging the rules.

Cookie fight: Austrian activist in tough online privacy fight

The 35-year-old Austrian lawyer and his Vienna-based privacy campaign group NOYB (None Of Your Business) is currently handling no fewer than 800 complaints in various jurisdictions on behalf of internet users.

“For an average citizen, it’s almost impossible right now to enforce your rights”, Schrems told AFP. “For us as an organisation, it’s already a lot of work to do that” given the system’s complexity due to the regulators’ varying requirements, he added.

The 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes strict rules on how companies can use and store personal data, with the threat of huge fines for firms breaching them.

While hundreds of millions of euros in fines have been imposed following complaints filed by NOYB, Schrems said the GDPR is hardly ever enforced. And that’s a “big problem”, he added.

He said the disregard for fundamental rights such as data privacy is almost comparable to “a dictatorship”. “The difference between reality and the law is just momentous,” Schrems
added.

‘Annoying’ cookies

Instead of tackling the problems raised by the GDPR, companies resort to “window dressing” while framing the rules as an “annoying law” full of “crazy cookie banners”, according to Schrems.

Under the regulation, companies have been obliged to seek user consent to install “cookies” enabling browsers to save information about a user’s online habits to serve up highly targeted ads.

Industry data suggests only three percent of internet users actually approve of cookies, but more than 90 percent are pressured to consent due to a “deceptive design” which mostly features “accept” buttons.

Stymied by the absence of a simple “yes or no” option and overwhelmed by a deluge of pop-ups, users get so fed up that they simply give up, Schrems said. Contrary to the law’s intent, the burden is being “shifted to the individual consumer, who should figure it out”.

Even though society now realises the importance of the right to have private information be forgotten or removed from the internet, real control over personal data is still far-off, the activist said. But NOYB has been helping those who want to take back control by launching
privacy rights campaigns that led companies to adopt “reject” buttons.

 Shift of business model 

Regulators have imposed big penalties on companies that violated GDPR rules: Facebook owner Meta, whose European headquarters are in Dublin, was hit with fines totalling 390 million euros ($424 million) in January.

One reason why tech giants like Google or Meta as well as smaller companies choose against playing by the GDPR rules is because circumventing them pays off, Schrems said.

Thriving on the use of private data, tech behemoths make “10 to 20 times more money by violating the law, even if they get slapped with the maximum fine”, he added.

Contacted by AFP, both companies said they were working hard to make sure their practices complied with the regulations.

Schrems also accuses national regulators of either being indifferent or lacking the resources to seriously investigate complaints. “It’s a race to the bottom,” Schrems said. “Each country has its own way of not getting anything done”.

Buoyed by his past legal victories, Schrems looks to what he calls the “bold” EU Court of Justice to bring about change as it “usually is a beacon of hope in all of this”.

Meanwhile, the European Commission is considering a procedures regulation to underpin and clarify the GDPR.

In the long-run, however, the situation will only improve once large companies “fundamentally shift their business models”. But that would require companies to stop being “as crazy profitable as they are right now,” Schrems said.

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