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France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

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Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#31

Post by olivermarks »

Hate speech definition: 'abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation'.

How can this possibly be enforced? This is Bowdlerization of online debate. (removing material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), especially with the result that the text becomes weaker or less effective).

Hate speech will just be pushed underground, it doesn't solve anything or make anything go away but it does reinforce 'the establishment view', something the French ENA currently have a tight control on.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#32

Post by nickff »

centimeter wrote: post #12

How long until internet companies decide that relatively small and litigious markets aren't worth their time and simply ignore laws like this? If every country with an economy the size of 1 or 2 large US states start making up their own censorship laws and trying to force companies to enforce them, at some point this causes huge inefficiencies. I can see two end states to this: 1. If the censoring country has enough…

There is a third possible 'end state', which is that each restrictive country with a large market ends up in a 'sandbox'. This could look a lot like the Great Firewall, but outsourced.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#33

Post by t-writescode »

trianglem wrote: post #19
sneak wrote: post #15

Who decides authoritatively what is or isn’t “hate speech” within the 24 hour period? The conclusion TFA makes seems likely: these services will just err on the side of “delete first, ask questions later” to protect themselves from liability, making all sorts of legal expression impossible. The current state of online publishing is really sad, and getting worse. Very few modern services used for hosting can be used t…

Being made fun of for anything that people biologically cannot change is hate speech. It’s not some complicated quagmire of laws you are trying to make it out to be.

24 hours means it’s going to need some sort of automation for Reddit or any popular news website’s comment section.

So what is hate speech in a way that can be automated?

Will that automated approach squelch valuable speech too? What if a certain disease impacts an ethnicity more than others? Is ‘black people tend to Sickle Cell more often than white people’ hate speech? Could a moderator decide that, given the fines? Could automation?

This is where a very loud problem is and this is the complexity you’re claiming is ‘simple’.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#34

Post by qball »

aspenmayer wrote: post #3

'There are multiple levels of fines. It starts at hundreds of thousand of euros but it can reach up to 4% of the global annual revenue of the company with severe cases. The Superior Council of the Audiovisual (CSA) [0] is the regulator in charge of those cases. 'Germany has already passed similar regulation and there are ongoing discussions at the European Union level.' [0] https://www.csa.fr

>there are ongoing discussions at the European Union level

I suspect that if the EU really does implement this, the US will likely make it against US law to obey media censorship requests from other countries against speech that the First Amendment protects. They probably should have done that a little while ago (curating content under the request of a foreign government should be one of those things that revoke your Section 230 privileges), but better late than never.

Other countries dictating what can and cannot be said on US services is already a big problem, and will only get worse, and the EU's bargaining position is much weaker than China's given that the vast majority of EU citizens use US services.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#35

Post by kansface »

Joeri wrote: post #14
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #2

france is such a weird place. In some ways it's a very free society. In other ways it's not free at all. Don't most of the euro countries have weird laws about hate speech like this?

It can be argued the U.S. is the “weird” country for not restricting hate speech. It’s not just the EU, most countries regulate hate speech. This is not perceived as restricting freedom, because it protects the freedoms of the group the hate speech targets (one person’s freedom ends where another’s begins).

> it protects the freedoms of the group the hate speech targets

Which freedoms would that be?

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#36

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

jimbob45 wrote: post #28
centimeter wrote: post #12

How long until internet companies decide that relatively small and litigious markets aren't worth their time and simply ignore laws like this? If every country with an economy the size of 1 or 2 large US states start making up their own censorship laws and trying to force companies to enforce them, at some point this causes huge inefficiencies. I can see two end states to this: 1. If the censoring country has enough…

France is a relatively small market?

yes. Especially if they actually try to fine someone like reddit "4% of the global annual revenue of the company" for not deleting someone's hateful comment.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#37

Post by akersten »

henearkr wrote: post #30

I bet this will induce deplatformization. You do not react the same way if you are a platform (in which case you just deactivate or delete the contents as soon as it is flagged by anyone), or if you are yourself responsible for your website (in which case you will fight to defend that you don't need to take down the contents). My big question is: is AWS, or any other cloud-based hosting system, considered a platform…

> My big question is: is AWS, or any other cloud-based hosting system, considered a platform under this law?

They'll probably go after the first point of contact they can find in the chain hosting the text they don't like.

Facebook would clearly be hit with the demand before Level3 would. A peer-to-peer message board that is mostly decentralized, but has a homebase in AWS to coordinate the swarms? Yeah, probably AWS is going to be told to do what they can to take it down.

To soapbox for a second - this kind of policing is ridiculous on its face from my perspective as a US citizen. (And that's coming from someone who has no issue with companies themselves moderating their websites, I think that's a natural solution to cultivate the online community that the site operators desire. But the government compelling them to do so is beyond the pale.)

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#38

Post by superflit »

olivermarks wrote: post #31

Hate speech definition: 'abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation'. How can this possibly be enforced? This is Bowdlerization of online debate. (removing material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), especially with the result that the text becomes weaker or less effectiv…

This is a very broad term on this law.

"prejudice against a particular group."

So if I call Trump supporters "ignorant red necks and backward people," Will it be considered Hate speech?

Or when people say:

"White people are "

Will that be considered hate speech too?

Disclaimer: I am a "protected" minority, but I am in favor of free speech. Even if what you say is ugly or garbage.

PS. I consider downvotes here as offensive and "hate speech".

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#39

Post by AlchemistCamp »

jimbob45 wrote: post #28
centimeter wrote: post #12

How long until internet companies decide that relatively small and litigious markets aren't worth their time and simply ignore laws like this? If every country with an economy the size of 1 or 2 large US states start making up their own censorship laws and trying to force companies to enforce them, at some point this causes huge inefficiencies. I can see two end states to this: 1. If the censoring country has enough…

France is a relatively small market?

France is a medium-sized market, roughly equivalent to California—much smaller than the US, China or Japan, but larger than many countries.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#40

Post by henearkr »

akersten wrote: post #37
henearkr wrote: post #30

I bet this will induce deplatformization. You do not react the same way if you are a platform (in which case you just deactivate or delete the contents as soon as it is flagged by anyone), or if you are yourself responsible for your website (in which case you will fight to defend that you don't need to take down the contents). My big question is: is AWS, or any other cloud-based hosting system, considered a platform…

> My big question is: is AWS, or any other cloud-based hosting system, considered a platform under this law? They'll probably go after the first point of contact they can find in the chain hosting the text they don't like. Facebook would clearly be hit with the demand before Level3 would. A peer-to-peer message board that is mostly decentralized, but has a homebase in AWS to coordinate the swarms? Yeah, probably AWS…

Uh... okay, then, if you are truly self-hosted (meaning, there is a big whirring, heating server in your living room), then would your internet provider company be compelled by the law to cancel your subscription?

Because, this is only the continuing of this logic...

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