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French President Emmanuel Macron criticized big tech companies’ handling of hate speech on their platforms.
In an interview with the BBC, Macron took on Meta and Google specifically, saying that they “simply don’t deliver” on their engagements around content moderation on their platforms.
Macron made the remarks in the wake of the Christchurch Call Summit, an initiative involving world leaders and tech companies that was launched after the online live-streaming of a terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019. The aim is to stop the spread of terrorist and violent content online.
Meta and Google didn’t send representatives to Friday’s Christchurch Call gathering in Paris, which Macron said shows that “they don’t want to play anymore.” Other companies, such as X, Amazon, Microsoft and OpenAI had representatives there.
Many platforms also don’t have sufficient moderators capable of handling the French language, Macron added, calling it out as a “shame.”
Under the EU’s new content moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act, platforms recently disclosed for the first time how many content moderators they have for each official language of the EU. Facebook for example said it has 226 moderators for French.
Macron pointed out that TikTok, not yet a member of the Christchurch Call, improved its efforts on that front with 687 French content moderators. Earlier this week, Macron met TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, after which he “recognized” the progress TikTok has made under the DSA.
Meta and Google didn’t respond to requests for comment in time for publication.
Océane Herrero contributed reporting from Paris.
