France’s National Assembly has approved a draft bill which directs social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to take down any hateful content from their platform within 24 hours, Reuters reported. According to the draft law, companies will have to put in place tools to alert users about "clearly illicit" content related to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability. The bill was approved by the National Assembly on July 5 and has now passed to the senate. It will go back and forth between the two houses until they both agree on it. The lower house will take the final decision if the houses do not reach an agreement. France's broadcasting regulator CSA (Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel) will be responsible for imposing the sanctions. Also, a separate prosecutor's office will be set up. Le Monde explained that according to the draft bill, if a social networking company refuses to delete hateful content, or breaches the 24 hour deadline, the representative of the company can be imprisoned for a year and fined €250,000. For a “legal person”, this fine may be increased to €1.25 million. Also, the social network will be exposed to administrative sanctions imposed by CSA. These can go up to 4% of the global turnover of the company. Citing a government source, the Reuters report also said that Facebook had agreed to share identification data of users suspected of hate speech with judges in France. Facebook introduced one-strike policy for Live after NZ massacre The French draft bill…
