French Social Media Law Is Another Coronavirus Blow To Freedom Of Speech

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As the coronavirus takes its 27,000th victim in France, the French parliament has passed a new law that forces social networks to remove certain hateful and illegal content within 24 hours. Signed into law yesterday, the “Lutte contre la haine sur internet” act requires digital platforms to remove discriminatory and sexually abusive comments within 24 hours of being flagged by users.

At the same time, networks have to remove content related to terrorism and child pornography within an hour of flagging. Failure to comply with the law will result in a fine of up to €1.25 million.

This will come as welcome news to victims of online hate speech. However, France’s social media law presents a very real danger to freedom of speech. What’s more, it seems as though the French government and the Assemblée Nationale has exploited fear over online coronavirus misinformation to pass it.

A very similar law was passed in Germany in 2018. Then, similar fears surrounding freedom of speech and censorship were aired, with critics claiming that the German law–dubbed the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG)–delegates too much responsibility for deciding what is legitimate free speech to tech companies.

As the Germany Director at Human Rights Watch, Wenzel Michalski, said at the time:

“It is vague, overbroad, and turns private companies into overzealous censors to avoid steep fines, leaving users with no judicial oversight or right to appeal.”

As with the German law, one of the flaws of the new French act is that there are no penalties if social media networks wrongly remove content that is later found not to be in violation of any laws or community guidelines. Take together with the threat of fines for not removing ‘hateful’ content, this will almost inevitably mean that legitimate freedom of expression will be curtailed.

More seriously, there is arguably no objective or reliable way of knowing just how successful such a law will be. Writing about NetzDG in April last year, researchers from the University of British Columbia and the University of Amsterdam noted in a paper that relying on self-reported metrics from social networks themselves could be dangerous and misleading:

“The number of takedowns or number of complaints become a metric to measure the law’s efficacy; these takedowns might be ineffective or even counterproductive in combating the overall prevalence of hate speech,” they wrote. “In short, it will require much more research — and greater access to data — to determine whether NetzDG is achieving its aim, and whether any benefits outweigh the harms to free speech.”

Given that the actual effectiveness of the German social media law is still unproven, it becomes curious as to how and why the French parliament passed a nearly identical law. However, one explanation isn’t hard to find: the coronavirus.

More specifically, the alarm over coronavirus misinformation has provided the French government with the perfect impetus for pushing through unproven measures which will most likely reduce freedom of speech and increase censorship.

Indeed, the French government has been quick to play up the dangers of coronavirus misinformation. In March, it took the step of issuing a statement in order to correct one popular piece of coronavirus rumour. In May, it went so far as publishing a coronavirus “fake news” page, which it used to dispel various untruths surrounding the Covid-19 outbreak.

Interestingly, it was forced to remove this page after complaints from France’s journalists union, which claimed that the debunking page was a “manifestly illegal attack on the principles of pluralism in the expression of opinions and on the neutrality of public authorities.”

That’s right: France’s journalists believe that the French government is attacking and wants to attack “pluralism in the expression of opinions.” Seen in this light, the new French social media law becomes just another part of this attack. Although this time, thanks to concern over the coronavirus pandemic and over how online misinformation may be putting us in further danger, the French government had more leeway from public opinion in going through with an attack on digital freedom of expression.

Related to this, it’s also interesting to note that, as CNN reports, the French social media law is the “first taken up by France’s Lower House that is unrelated to the Covid-19 pandemic since March.” The law was in fact first introduced in March 2019, but has been on the back-burner ever since. However, with even Facebook now getting in on the act of curbing coronavirus misinformation, the French government and parliament has clearly identified the perfect moment to restrict online freedom of speech.

And that’s what France’s social media law will do. Yes, it will most likely curb some instances of hate speech. But under the cover of coronavirus concern, its passage means that many instances of legitimate free speech will be censored.

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