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French MPs have pbaded a landmark law to combat online hate speech that will force social media networks to remove offending content within 24 hours and create a new button allowing users to report abuse.
Members of the lower house of Parliament voted 434 to 33 to pbad the law, which is inspired by German legislation that came into force last year. Sixty-nine members abstained.
Sites that do not comply with the law and remove "obviously hateful" content incur fines of up to € 1.25 million (£ 1.12 million). The Senate, the upper house, will now consider the bill and may propose amendments.
A number of high-tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube, have been cracking down on hate and violent content in recent months, calling for tougher regulation.
Governments have accused online platforms of not doing enough to quell hate speech at a summit in Paris in May after an armed man listened to his Facebook attack on two mosques New Zealand via a camera mounted to the head. Images have been shared millions of times despite efforts to remove them.
"We need to ensure the security and protection of people online, especially the most vulnerable," said Laetitia Avia, the editor of the bill. She told Parliament last week that she had received so many racist insults on Twitter that she once thought that a day without abuse was the result of a technical problem.
Critics say the law gives too much power to platforms by making them referees of online speech.
Facebook asked if the 24-hour window for removing hate content was realistic, stating that many messages required careful badysis and delicate legal badessment.
MEPs debated at length last week's night to try to figure out what constitutes "obviously hateful" messages or videos. They agreed to include crimes against humanity, but amendments aimed at incorporating specific references to anti-Zionism and hatred against the state of Israel were rejected and did not result in the final text.
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