The insults against Miss Provence revive the debate on the anonymity of social networks
April Benayoum, Miss Provence 2020. AFP - LOIC VENANCE
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Miss Provence, April Benayoum was the subject, during the election of Miss France this Saturday, December 19, of attacks, obviously anti-Semitic, on the social network Twitter, after indicating that her father was of Israeli nationality.
An investigation for "racist insults and incitement to racial hatred" has since been opened by the Paris prosecutor's office and is relaunching the debate on the anonymity of Internet users on social networks.
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This umpteenth wave of hateful comments written most of the time by completely anonymous people shows that the legal apparatus is no longer suitable for social networks, believes Alexandre Lazarègue, lawyer specializing in digital law and press law.
“
Unless the users of these networks are made aware of the seriousness of these comments they make, I fear that it will be possible to prevent them.
Something that is not consistent in a democratic society is the principle of anonymity, because expressing oneself in the public space also means taking into account otherness, encounter, contradictory, which anonymity does not allow.
I truly believe that there is a solution in banning this principle, at least in expression in the public space
”.
Another problem: as long as the web giants continue to be seen as simple hosts with limited liability, the dissemination of hate messages on their respective platforms is not about to stop.
The other worrying phenomenon is that "
online hatred has increased since the first confinement
", observe digital specialists, the moderation devices that have been put in place on social networks have thus far been shown to be more than deficient in tackling the global scourge of online hate.
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