Facebook, France haggle over hate controls

French authorities should have more access to Facebook algorithms and scope to audit the company’s internal policies against hate speech, a report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron concludes.

It comes after Facebook was heavily criticised by politicians and the public for its failure to more rapidly remove footage of the March shooting attack in Christchurch, New Zealand from its network. Fifty people were killed in the assault, with footage of it circulating online for days.

The French president, who will meet Facebook founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg later on Friday, wants France to take a leading role on tech regulation, seeking to strike a balance between what he perceives as the United States’ laissez-faire stance and China’s iron grip on the Internet. 

The 33-page report, co-written by a former head of public affairs for Google France, recommends increasing oversight over the world’s largest social media network. It also argues for allowing an independent regulator to police the efforts of large tech companies to deal with hate speech.

The report comes after Facebook permitted a team of French regulators to spend six months inside the company monitoring its policies. It represents a “half-time” assessment for their stint which started in January.

“The inadequacy and lack of credibility in the self-regulatory approach adopted by the largest platforms justify public intervention to make them more responsible,” the report said.

Companies like Facebook cannot simply declare themselves to be transparent, it added, noting that checking the integrity of the algorithms they use was a particularly complex task.

Responding to the report, Facebook’s vice president for policy, Richard Allan, said it was a helpful primer for the way forward and suggested there were grounds for co-operation.

“The report sets out a path towards a new model for content regulation that has the potential to be both effective and workable,” he said.