France to impose tougher rules against online hate speech

French prime minister Edouard Philippe has announced that the country will toughen its stance against hate speech, to make sure that social media companies more proactively remove racist content from the Internet. According to Philippe, ‘These days a newspaper director is criminally responsible if hateful comments are posted on its website but if you run a social network anything goes,’ adding that content that is published and circulated in France ‘must answer to the laws of the French republic’. Philippe said that France will review its own regulations while awaiting progress at the EU, which issued a recommendation on illegal online content earlier this month. The EU will monitor the response to the recommendation before determining on potential additional steps.