French President promises ban on fake news during elections
38 replies, posted
[quote]Emmanuel Macron has vowed to introduce a law to ban fake news on the internet during French election campaigns.
The French president, who beat the far-right Marine Le Pen to win 2017’s election, said he wanted new legislation for social media platforms during election periods “in order to protect democracy”.
In his new year’s speech to journalists at the Élysée palace, Macron said he would shortly present the new law in order to fight the spread of fake news, [B]which he said threatened liberal democracies.
[/B]
New legislation for websites would include more transparency about sponsored content. [B]Under the new law, websites would have to say who is financing them and the amount of money for sponsored content would be capped.[/B]
For fake news published during election seasons, [B]an emergency legal action could allow authorities to remove that content or even block the website,[/B] Macron said. “If we want to protect liberal democracies, we must be strong and have clear rules,” he added.[/quote]
[url]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/03/emmanuel-macron-ban-fake-news-french-president[/url]
Could be great if handled right.
That's actually pretty scary seeing Macron going full 1984's the ministry of truth tbh.
[QUOTE=varg666;53025314]That's actually pretty scary seeing Macron going full 1984's the ministry of truth tbh.[/QUOTE]
Ya well it's pretty scary to see the world go full Third Reich thanks to to literal fake news
[QUOTE=TheNerdPest14;53025283]Could be great if handled right.[/QUOTE]
"Good thing that can be dangerous might be good if done good."
Is this system separate from government?
What are the areas around whistleblowing and investigative journalists, among other things.
[QUOTE=Wafflemonstr;53025320]Ya well it's pretty scary to see the world go full Third Reich thanks to to literal fake news[/QUOTE]
but I don't think the answer is this either, sure it COULD be done correctly, but just because macron isn't a nazi doesnt mean I trust him to invoke emergency powers to take down stuff he deems "fake news" or block websites. and even if you OD trust him, for whatever reason, this sets a dangerous precedent for the future if presidents are allowed to begin blocking and removing content during election season.
the law I agree with however, but will naturally only affect french websites. I think it'll be interesting to see which groups sponsor specific pieces, but at the same time will likely just lead to the same result, with group a only trusting groups sponsoring their narrative and group b the opposite
Mass censorship vs fake news
I love the future!
[QUOTE=Boilrig;53025342]Is this system separate from government?
What are the areas around whistleblowing and investigative journalists, among other things.[/QUOTE]
I feel as if having whistleblowing journalists would just be brushed off as "fake news"
On the one hand, objectively fake news has caused the western world an endless amount of pain in recent years and the sooner we find a way to combat it, the better
On the other hand, imagine if Donald criminalized whatever he dubbed fake news. That'd be pretty not great
This seems pretty hard to judge without knowing what the actual laws will be.
Some of it sounds very sensible, effectively making it so that websites like Facebook have to have some sort of accountability when promoting "news," which is someone that is pretty common with old media. Hell, it's why fox classify themselves as entertainment and not news, to evade responsibility.
We need something like this in the UK, at least some form of stopping newspapers being super biased.
Hell, one of the main reasons n Brexit went through was because of The Sun and the daily mail telling people to vote for it. Same with the slandering of Labour they did in 2015.
Seems simple enough, if something is proven objectively false then it gets removed.
What are you guys insane? How can anyone be for this? Fight fake news by censoring it? Yeah, totally won't be abused ever.
[QUOTE=Intoxicated Spy;53025622]What are you guys insane? How can anyone be for this? Fight fake news by censoring it? Yeah, totally won't be abused ever.[/QUOTE]
Some people are very naive.
As someone said earlier, just imagine the things Donald Trump would consider fake news or a fabrication.
Judicial process in place to prove something patently untrue and have it banned from distribution or edited, yes. Emergency powers? Can we please not.
im glad MGS2 is continuing to be relevant
I don’t think France had a considerable fake news problem in the elections last year. What did happen in the media in regards to the election was the coverage of Emmanuel Macron eating up quite more than its fair share.
But I digress. Measures preventing hacks from making a quick buck while damaging the moral integrity of the profession and, or, giving the French state leverage to deal with foreign disinformation could prove useful at some point in the future. Front National is getting so deep into bedlock with RT that this seems an acceptable preventive measure.
[QUOTE]Le Pen attacked Macron’s plan for a ban on fake news, tweeting that [URL="https://www.theguardian.com/world/france"]France[/URL] was “muzzling its citizens”. She asked: “Who will decide if a piece of news is fake? Judges? The government?”[/QUOTE]
With an attitude like this, coming from a person who perpetuated fake news herself, I can see why solutions like this might seem palatable to some. There are people out there who are trying to create an atmosphere of fear, paranoia, and distrust of various social and political institutions to create an environment where facts and reality are unrecognizable. It's fucking terrifying tbh.
I can see it working only if it has to be proved false in court.
[editline]4th January 2018[/editline]
[QUOTE=Intoxicated Spy;53025622]What are you guys insane? How can anyone be for this? Fight fake news by censoring it? Yeah, totally won't be abused ever.[/QUOTE]
Presumably it would not be the lawmaking branch that actually exercised these powers though. They make the law, the police and judges enforce it.
[QUOTE=elowin;53025825]I can see it working only if it has to be proved false in court[/QUOTE]
Wont work. Part of the reason fake news was so effective was because its very easy to manufacture. The court would be bogged down within days.
Won't be abused at all...
I don't see this working at all
[QUOTE=varg666;53025314]That's actually pretty scary seeing Macron going full 1984's the ministry of truth tbh.[/QUOTE]
I'd thought this lark would be right up your street same with boilrig n mattk50.
Tis abusable but if we didn't do stuff because of potential unpleasant outcomes then we'd do nothing.
Doing nothing and letting creeps with fake news subvert democracy is worse than limited scope short term censorship of false information (they shouldn't allow slander either). Your lot can spread lies and false info the rest of the time, just not during election time.
Don't get me wrong - I despised Le Pen and am very glad she lost, but this is REALLY scary to me. Nobody is unbiased, and the free marketplace of ideas is such that there will be wrong views posited from time to time. Nobody should have the right to determine what is truth and what isn't, especially not somebody appointed either independently or from within government. I know that fake news is not simply getting things wrong, and that there is a malevolent agency behind it, and that there are often numerous articles, but even then... I find this scary and it is never okay to be eroding these civil liberties away, especially when it is a highly politically charged issue and climate.
I'm sorry... I cannot support this. In fact, my greatest fear is that this announcement, even if it probably never results in any actual legislation, is just providing ammunition for the people who disseminate fake news to claim that they're being 'suppressed' and Alex Jones-esque figures will be able to claim asylum in the church of victimhood, something they always crave.
[QUOTE=Electrocuter;53025590]Seems simple enough, if something is proven objectively false then it gets removed.[/QUOTE]
Can I post something that's been bothering me about the sentiment you are posting?
Subjective and Objective are just points of view of the function (the subject and object of a sentence-function, for example), I don't get why people make the "objective 100% of the time" argument when the object of each law-function is the government (or whoever has the power to make legislation, could be hidden actors).
Subjective doesn't mean "personal opinion" like people always say, The reason for that being common is that when conducting a study the "subject" might mean an individual person who is self reporting their own subjective "personal opinion".
WE are the subject in the function of law/government (assuming you are subject to the will of the government).
Subjective is the only point of view I care about in the field of government because the subjects matter, and ideally EVERYONE should be a subject to the government at some level.
None of this discussion will be useful until language is defined because we all have different assumptions going in about what the words we're using mean, we don't really know each other like family even though it's a community.
[QUOTE=zakedodead;53026358]Can I post something that's been bothering me about the sentiment you are posting?
Subjective and Objective are just points of view of the function (the subject and object of a sentence-function, for example), I don't get why people make the "objective 100% of the time" argument when the object of each law-function is the government (or whoever has the power to make legislation, could be hidden actors).
Subjective doesn't mean "personal opinion" like people always say, The reason for that being common is that when conducting a study the "subject" might mean an individual person who is self reporting their own subjective "personal opinion".
WE are the subject in the function of law/government (assuming you are subject to the will of the government).
Subjective is the only point of view I care about in the field of government because the subjects matter, and ideally EVERYONE should be a subject to the government at some level.
None of this discussion will be useful until language is defined because we all have different assumptions going in about what the words we're using mean, we don't really know each other like family even though it's a community.[/QUOTE]
I think you just pulled some wonky logic here, because it does not make sense at all. The terms "subjective" and "objective" used in that manner are used as adjectives to DESCRIBE a point of view. They are not used as perspectives or points of views themselves. A subjective thing in this sense means that the validity or correctness of something will depend on the way the subject interprets it, and no single opinion is correct. Objective means that the conclusion will hold true no matter which subject interprets it, and that there is only one valid opinion.
Examples:
Subjective opnion: "It's cold in here." - Because what's cold to someone may not be cold to someone else.
Objective opinion: "2+2=4" - Because no matter who does the math, the correct answer will always be 4.
I mean it could work well enough at first, but then you can get some nut later like Trump or someone like Erdogan who would totally abuse the system. A government shouldn't have that kind of power.
It's all well and good to stop "fake news" when it goes after the candidate you like. And then a candidate you don't like comes into power, and decides to stop the news you listen to. Suddenly, that's fascism.
Sorry folks, it was from the get-go. Supporting this means you support government silencing of dissenting opinions, no way around it.
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;53027639]It's all well and good to stop "fake news" when it goes after the candidate you like. And then a candidate you don't like comes into power, and decides to stop the news you listen to. Suddenly, that's fascism.
Sorry folks, it was from the get-go. Supporting this means you support government silencing of dissenting opinions, no way around it.[/QUOTE]
have the specifics of the law been revealed or what
[editline]5th January 2018[/editline]
like, "emergency powers to block content" sounds ominous as fuck and i can't in good conscience do anything but condemn macron here. i'd like to see a way to hold organizations accountable for intentionally, verifiably misleading people, but you need to do it with a very, very light touch - this, clearly, isn't that - and even then, you risk setting a horrible precedent for the future. but we simply don't have the info to go around calling this fascism
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