France's Supreme Court equivalent rejected most parts of a bill that would obligate social media companies to remove so-called hate speech within 24 hours.
The ruling by the Constitutional Council on Thursday, June 18, 2020, is a win for free speech and even for big social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook. However, it is a disappointment for President Emmanuel Macron, who committed to restricting speech in the country and who wanted to make his country a pioneer in fighting misinformation, hate speech, and other illicit content on social platforms.
The extreme bill would have required social media companies to take down content with hate speech (content expressing prejudice against gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, and gender) within 24 hours. If a social platform failed to comply with the law, they would have been slapped with fines as high as 4 percent of their total global revenues.
In the ruling, the court said that the proposal "undermines the exercise of freedom of expression and communication in a manner that is unnecessary, inappropriate, and disproportionate."
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