France's President Macron Wants To Block Websites During Elections To Fight 'Fake News' (gizmodo.com)

French President Emmanuel Macron has a rather extreme approach to combat fake news: ban entire websites. In a speech to journalists on Wednesday, Macron said he planned to introduce new legislation to strictly regulate fake news during online political campaigns. Gizmodo reports: His proposal included a number of measures, most drastically "an emergency legal action" that could enable the government to either scrap "fake news" from a website or even block a website altogether. "If we want to protect liberal democracies, we must be strong and have clear rules," Macron said. "When fake news are spread, it will be possible to go to a judge... and if appropriate have content taken down, user accounts deleted and ultimately websites blocked."

Macron, himself a target of election interference, also outlined some less extreme measures in his speech yesterday. He proposed more rigid requirements around transparency, specifically in relation to online ads during elections. According to the Guardian, Macron said the legislation would force platforms to publicly identify who their advertisers are, as well as limit how much they can spend on ads over the course of an election campaign.

Comments

A perfectly good idea

[russotto]

I can think of no possible way this could be abused as political censorship to, say, protect the incumbent government from inconvenient reporting.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[amiga3D]

But right now both sides can use that tactic, that's called free speech. When only one side gets to tell their bullshit that is censorship. The fact that anyone could make a serious pitch for censoring free speech is chilling.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[mwvdlee]

Hearing idiots speak is the price you pay for your own freedom of speech.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[RedK]

So let's tie up the court system in dealing with judicial attacks between political opponents, while actual judicial matters pile up from the now lack of judges and court clerks to process actual requests for actual justice.

Sounds like a great plan even if both sides get to use it as a tool!

How bout this : The solution is never more governement. There already exists libel and slander laws. The bar is already high enough. Let's not give courts the power to censor the Internet.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[AmiMoJo]

In the face of it, it seems like he wants a fast track legal procedure. The law already allows action against this kind of thing (slander/libel etc) but it often moves slowly and elections are a hard deadline.

It might actually be a good way to handle fake news. There will be the transparency and oversight of the legal system, with separation of politicians and judiciary. If the news isn't fake then trying to abuse the system is unlikely to end well for the abuser.

Probably worth trying. My main concern would be the potential cost of mounting a defence. In the interests of democracy it should be free for both sides.