The French parliament will debate legislation this Thursday regarding fake news, or what the government calls “manipulation of information.”
The law, which if passed would be put into effect next year, would allow French authorities to stop the publication of information determined to be false before an election. It would require social networks to crack down on fake news and provide ways for users to flag false information and notify authorities.
The law would also allow the government to block foreign broadcasters if they aim to destabilize the French government, a measure likely targeting RT, a Russian global news channel funded by the Kremlin, which was accused of promoting fake news during the run-up to last year’s French election.
French President Emmanuel Macron introduced the idea for the bill after his 2017 presidential campaign, as rumors swirled online that that he was gay and had a secret bank account in the Bahamas.
Other European countries have responded to the fake news phenomenon in several ways. Italy uses an online system to report false information, the British government organized a “fake news” unit, and the European Union is working on a “code of practice” for social media networks.
In the U.S. too, combating fake news on social media has become a hot topic after the Russians were tied to phony ads that appeared during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“Thousands of propaganda accounts on social networks are spreading all over the world, in all languages, lies invented to tarnish political officials, personalities, public figures, journalists,” Macron told journalists in January, according to the Washington Post. “We are going to develop our legal means of protecting democracy against fake news.”
Opponents say news should be able to spread freely during elections and that the government could potentially use the new law to block information it finds to be compromising or embarrassing.
“It’s a step towards censorship,” said Vincent Lanier, head of France’s national journalists’ union, the SNJ, according to Daily Mail. He added that the bill could be “inefficient and potentially dangerous.”
