Paris (AFP)
The National Assembly voted for better targeting of hate content online that intends to fight a LREM bill, adopted Wednesday in new reading.
Controversial, the text of Lætitia Avia provides that platforms and search engines will have the obligation to remove content "manifestly" illegal within 24 hours, under penalty of being fined up to 1.25 million euros. This includes incitement to hatred, violence, insults of a racist or religious nature.
"It may appear that the field of offense was too broad," recognized Tuesday night to Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O, after recommendations from the European Commission.
The deputies thus adopted a government amendment excluding content from the field of regulation relating to trafficking in human beings and the offense of pimping.
Relaying fears of associations, Raphaël Gérard (LREM) supported this last exclusion of content, stressing that "a message of a sexually explicit nature or published by associations defending the rights of sex workers (could have) subject to withdrawal from platforms without it being an illegal activity ".
The government also initially wanted to exclude sexual harassment from the text, but Lætitia Avia opposed it.
"You are trying to groom article 1" of the bill faced with a "risk of unconstitutionality", launched to the government Guillaume Larrivé (LR), opposed to the flagship measure of obligation to remove content "manifestly" illicit, like the left of the left, the National Rally and part of the centrists, in the name of freedom of expression.
Mr. Larrivé asked that the President of the Republic or the Prime Minister seize the Constitutional Council.
This bill has raised many reservations, including the National Digital Council, the National Consultative Commission for Human Rights, or the Quadrature du Net, which defends individual freedoms in the digital world.
MEPs also voted in favor of a government amendment providing for a "specific rule", in the words of the Secretary of State, for terrorist or child pornography content in the event of notification by the public authorities: the withdrawal period will no longer be 24 hours like now, but an hour.
This deadline is "materially impossible to respect for the vast majority of web platforms", which "will have no choice but to close shop or to delegate their moderation to the automated censorship tools provided by Google and Facebook", moved La Quadrature du Net in a press release.
The National Assembly adopted the bill on a show of hands on Wednesday. The Senate will in turn examine it in new reading on January 30, before its final adoption on February 11 in the Assembly, which has the final say.
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