PARIS — To understand legislation currently before the French Senate, one needs to recall last year’s presidential election in the country.
Just days before the final vote in May, a posting on 4chan, the imageboard website that allows users to be anonymous, claimed then-candidate Emmanuel Macron owned a bank account in the Bahamas to evade French taxes. The rumor quickly spread to far-right media sites in the country and in the U.S., and eventually was mentioned by Macron’s opponent, the right-tilting Marine Le Pen.
That episode culminated months of skirmishes between media sites and Macron, who since the beginning of 2017 had accused the Russian news organizations Russia Today and Sputnik — both described by critics as propaganda outlets for the Kremlin — of spreading rumors to sway the election in favor of Le Pen. Macron’s accusation followed findings by the U.S. intelligence community that the Kremlin sought to influence the 2016 American presidential election through its own sets of “active measures” on social media.
Fast forward to this summer. Earlier this month, the French National Assembly approved a “fake news” law that will go to the Senate by the end of the month. Experts predict approval by November.
The worry here in France about how falsehoods may affect elections reflects growing anxieties around the world. The concern across Europe is especially high as governments search for ways to hold social media platforms and search engines accountable for online lies before the May 2019 European Union parliamentary elections.
“Platforms on the internet today diffuse a lot of information continually without necessarily sorting it,” says Fabienne Colboc, a member of the National Assembly and spokesperson for Macron’s En Marche! (In Motion!) party. “The motivation (for drafting the proposed law) was to oblige them to be more transparent to fight against fake news during electoral periods … to give people the ability to vote with good information.”
French politicians across the political spectrum, however, are calling the proposed law ineffective and a potential threat to freedom of speech. What’s more, critics say France already has strict media laws holding journalists and platforms like Facebook and Google accountable for the information they or their users distribute.
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“Many people are afraid the definition (of the proposed law) would be too broad or that it could set up precedents that allow the government to reduce freedom of speech,” says Tristan Mendès France, a French journalist and professor of new media at Sorbonne University.
The Crowded French Media Law Landscape
During the three months leading up to an election, the proposed law will give a judge 48 hours to decide whether any news item distributed on a social media platform or search engine accused of containing false information is devoid of “verifiable elements” that could in turn affect the outcome of a vote.
The proposed law also charges the government with monitoring and suspending any foreign news broadcast that deliberately disseminates fake news intended to disturb elections. The government can even rule to shut down outlets.
Restrictive media laws aren’t new for France. The 1881 Press Act fines journalists today up to 45,000 euros (about $52,000) for the publication, dissemination or reproduction of false information that’s published in bad faith, meaning the author can’t reasonably believe it’s true and the information is likely to disturb the public peace. During election periods, judges’ deadlines to make a decision are shortened from 20 days to 24 hours. The 1881 law, however, only covers journalists, Colboc says. The new law focuses solely on content distributors and foreign broadcasters.
A 2004 law is already frequently applied against social networks and search engines for disseminating defamatory content that’s anti-Semitic, sexist, homophobic, pornographic, incites racial hatred, denies the Holocaust or incites terrorism, but it doesn’t cover fake news.
Even with a new law, however, French courts may not be able to execute a decision against foreign companies such as those in the U.S., where the First Amendment to the Constitution protects freedom of speech. Google and Facebook have frequently complied with the 2004 law on good faith because they “want to have a clean image,” says lawyer Basile Ader, vice-bâtonnier of Paris and a specialist in media law. When he’s prosecuted cases involving Twitter, however, Ader says the cases go nowhere, and the new law will be similarly contested.
“They know they’re protected by the First Amendment and we can never execute, since they’re not a French company,” he says. Proponents of the law argue that they will pursue foreign companies with a large presence in France in court and compel them to pay fines.
Colboc argues the 48-hour window won’t be an issue from a legal standpoint. “We don’t ask the judge to determine whether the information is true or false,” she says. “We can find out the author and how the information was verified in 48 hours. If there aren’t verifiable sources, the judge can say it’s obviously false.”
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Yet all sides agree that 48 hours may be too late to quell rumors. “You can’t stop a hashtag,” says Mendès France. “False information on social media is virtually impossible to stop the way the law is proposed today.” Colboc argues, however, that it’s better to act than leave false news online.
Critics and proponents of the proposed law also agree on transparency provisions requiring platforms to clearly mark sponsored content, share how much its creator paid to push a story to the top of a page, and publish statistics on the impact of their algorithms. Ader says he believes such measures will soon be adopted worldwide, and others agree.
“Alleged manipulation of elections across the world has forced the issue to be considered,” says American lawyer David Klein, managing partner at Klein Moynihan Turco, a New York-based law firm specializing in internet issues. “I think transparency is a good thing. … People haven’t been skeptical of the source of their information.”
Distribution platforms such as the U.S. social network Gab and the Russian social platform VKontakte “are increasingly used in Europe by the extreme right wing to escape our hate speech legislation,” Mendès France says. The proposed law requires those platforms to have legal representation in France to simplify legal interventions.
France isn’t alone in Europe in trying to take action against fake news. In Germany, a new law compels social media platforms to remove content promoting hate speech or face fines of up to 50 million euros (about $58 million). In the Czech Republic, a commission watches for fake news, especially on pro-Russia media, but it doesn’t force companies to remove content. A similar effort is underway in the U.K., while Italy has launched a media literacy program in partnership with companies including Facebook.
Elsewhere around the world, Kenya‘s government in May passed a law that criminalizes both the spread of false information and the abuse of people on social media. In Asia, Malaysia‘s new government is working on redefining a fake news law brought by the previous government. Similar measures are being considered in the Philippines and Singapore.
Even in Russia, the source of so much concern over interference in countries’ politics, lawmakers from the governing party have submitted a bill to tackle fake news, The New York Times reports. All of the countries’ initiatives have triggered freedom of speech worries.
Ultimately, some experts say governments can do little. “This ban is fighting against an information ecosystem far beyond (a government’s) own capacities,” Mendès France says. Private organizations, he says, can more effectively counter fake news, pointing to groups such as Reporters Sans Frontières, a Le Monde team dedicated to debunking fake news, and the Sleeping Giants initiative, which, Mendès France says, has “managed to suck millions of dollars from fake news organizations.”
Still, even imperfect legislation has benefits, Mendès France says. “The positive thing is it sends a message to the general public that the government is taking this seriously.”
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French Wrestle with Tackling ‘Fake News’ with Proposed Law originally appeared on usnews.com
