French parliament passes online hate speech law

PARIS: French MPs on Tuesday passed a landmark law to fight online hate speech which will oblige social media networks to remove offending content in 24 hours and create a new button to enable users to flag abuse.

Members of the lower house of parliament voted by 434 in favour to 33 against to adopt the law, which is modelled on German legislation that came into force last year. Sixty-nine MPs abstained.

Sites that fail to comply with the law and remove "obviously hateful" content risk fines of up to 1.25 million euros ($1.4 million). The upper-house Senate will now examine the legislation, and could suggest amendments.

A series of tech giants, including Facebook and YouTube, announced crackdowns on hateful and violent content in recent months, spurring calls for tougher regulation. Governments accused online platforms of not doing enough to stamp out hate speech in a Paris summit in May after a gunman broadcast his attack on two New Zealand mosques live on Facebook via a head-mounted camera. The footage was shared millions of times despite efforts to remove it.

"We must ensure the safety and protection of people online, especially the most vulnerable," said Laetitia Avia, a black MP who drafted the bill. She told parliament last week she suffers so many racist insults on Twitter that she once thought an abuse-free day was due to a technical problem.