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Disinformation: the Bronner commission unveils its proposals to fight conspiracy and fake news

2022-01-11T22:21:54.873Z


Commissioned by Emmanuel Macron, the 14 members of the Bronner commission delivered their report on disinformation on Tuesday to the president of


The Bronner Commission on Disinformation and Conspiracy submitted its report on January 11 to President Emmanuel Macron, who supported several of his proposals, including education in "critical thinking" and the facilitation of access to data. social media platforms for researchers.

Chaired by sociologist Gérald Bronner, the commission was made up of 14 academics or competent personalities, including political scientist Roland Cayrol and Rudy Reichstadt, director of the NGO Conspiracy Watch.

Its purpose was to take stock of the impact of the information explosion made possible by digital technology, and the possible measures to be taken to prevent it from promoting disinformation, conspiracy and, ultimately, the weakening of information. of democracy.

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In a total of 30 recommendations, this report that Le Parisien was able to consult proposes in particular to make the strengthening of the “critical spirit” or the “methodical spirit” a great national cause, in national education and beyond. beyond, including in continuing education.

He recalls the importance, when fake news abound and social networks play a major role in their propagation, of regulating the digital giants more effectively, sometimes even at the heart of their algorithms.

Disable "algorithmic editorialization"

The Bronner report argues in fact for users of social networks to be able to more easily deactivate “algorithmic editorialization” of platforms, that is to say the way in which they offer content to their users.

The idea would be to offer chronological feeds that are no longer polluted by radical or sensational content to users, who would only see the content of the people they follow.

Because if some players in social networks, like Twitter, already offer this kind of algorithms to their users, others, like Facebook and Instagram, do everything possible to hide these features or make them unusable.

Better sanction the voluntary dissemination of false information

The Bronner report also looks at the funding of disinformation sites, particularly through online advertising.

The committee stresses the importance of limiting their sources of income by encouraging the online advertising sector to use "exclusion lists and inclusion of websites".

Also mentioned: the idea of ​​a possible evolution of the Civil Code, to facilitate the prosecution of those who knowingly disseminate false information.

"Any digital dissemination of news that we know to be inaccurate and which is prejudicial to others engages the civil liability of the person who commits it as well as of any person who knowingly repeats it", suggests for example the report.

Macron wants to "train our children more"

In his greetings to the press, Emmanuel Macron took up this idea of ​​"training our children more" and citizens in this "critical spirit" or "method". Only "the verification of sources", "the crossing of these", "the contradiction of arguments, the enlightened debate" can "build a path which leads to a truth, perhaps moreover provisional, but a truth" , he said.

The President of the Republic also included in the report the idea of ​​making data on the use of social networks accessible to researchers, so that the "virality" of false information can be studied with precision, for example.

"Our research must be able to have access to the data" of the platforms, "otherwise we are all suppliers or users of mechanisms more powerful than us and who manipulate us," he said.

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But social networks could be reluctant to do so.

In the summer of 2021, Facebook had the accounts of New York University researchers who studied social media disinformation deleted, The New York Times reported in an article reporting how the company was going on the offensive against social media. critics who assail him about disinformation.

Multiple executive initiatives

Victim of an attempt at destabilization during the last days of the 2017 electoral campaign, which he subsequently attributed to Russia, Emmanuel Macron has since multiplied, with his majority, the initiatives to try to reduce the risks of manipulation Internet-related. In particular, in 2018, Parliament adopted a law relating to the manipulation of information during an election period, which assigned new powers to the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA) in relation to digital platforms.

The government also created mid-2021 Viginum, an agency attached to the General Secretariat for National Defense (SGDN) and responsible for tracking down disinformation during an election period. The executive also intends to take advantage of the current French presidency of the European Union to push for rapid adoption of the new European law known as “DSA”, which should in particular strengthen the obligations imposed on major Internet platforms in terms of content moderation.

At the end of September, the establishment of the Bronner commission had been briefly disrupted by a controversy over one of its members, the professor of medicine Guy Vallancien, implicated in particular by the pulmonologist and whistleblower Irène Frachon for having " denied the 'seriousness' of the Mediator drug case.

Guy Vallancien very quickly announced that he was giving up participating in the work.

Source: leparis

All news articles on 2022-01-11

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