France's Top Court Blocks Social Media Ban For Under-15s (yahoo.com) 21
France's Constitutional Council has struck down a law that would have banned children under 15 from social media, ruling that it disproportionately restricted freedom of expression and lacked adequate privacy safeguards around age verification. President Emmanuel Macron has asked the government to rewrite the measure, with the goal of putting a revised version in place before spring 2027. Reuters reports: "The Council holds that the contested provisions, on the one hand, disproportionately infringe upon the freedom of expression and communication and, on the other, fail to provide the legal safeguards necessary to ensure the right to respect for private life," it said.
French lawmakers had approved the bill in July, becoming the first in Europe to follow Australia, whose world-first ban barred access to platforms including Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for under-16s in December. Lawmakers there are considering stricter penalties after data showed mixed success.
Countries around the globe, including China, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, have either instituted measures intended to curtail or bar access to social media for young people, or have said they were planning them. The European Union has said it was planning to seek stronger protections for children from harmful social media features.
French lawmakers had approved the bill in July, becoming the first in Europe to follow Australia, whose world-first ban barred access to platforms including Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for under-16s in December. Lawmakers there are considering stricter penalties after data showed mixed success.
Countries around the globe, including China, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, have either instituted measures intended to curtail or bar access to social media for young people, or have said they were planning them. The European Union has said it was planning to seek stronger protections for children from harmful social media features.
Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the parent's responsibility to instill values about things like social media and pornography, not the state.
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"Speaking of responsibility, decades ago France had an opportunity to actually enact responsibility into law with a mandate requiring DNA testing at birth. Take a good hard guess as to where all that fucking responsibility went. Dismissed under the premise that revealing all the lying cheating whores would not "preserve the peace of families."'
That sounds like a good idea.
If the child wishes to avail him.her self of any advantages of being born in France
(does France have Birthright citizenship)?
then the gov
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Thanks for the advice on raising children, old guy with no kids.
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Amazing win for people in France.
It's nothing of the sort. The French overwhelmingly supported the ban. The story here is that the law was written with a specific check and limitation missing so the Constitutional Council has rejected it. This will be amended and resubmitted in short order. In France all laws are reviewed by the Constitutional Council and every so often they find one that gets bounced back to the legislative branch for amendment as in this case.
We all know none of these laws have anything to do with protecting children.
The French don't subscribe to your conspiracy theory about the government using
I can see why they struck it down (Score:2)
Re: I can see why they struck it down (Score:5, Insightful)
They are smart enough to know an ID law when they see one
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The French didn't protest this and no ruling was made with any consideration of the French people's view. Laws passed in France get reviewed by the Constitutional Council as they go into effect and in this case there was a very specific component identified which made it unconstitutional, specifically the lack of defined conditions or limits for requesting ID checks.
This is nothing more than the teacher telling their student they made a mistake in the assignment before it gets fixed and resubmitted.
The Fren
I applaud French court's reasoning! (Score:2)
Please think of the children! (Score:1)
Top court (Score:3)
France has three top courts: The conseil constitutionnel, whose duty is to check that laws are not in conflict this the constitution. The cour de cassation, is the top court for all cases that do not involve the state, and the conseil d'état, which is the legal adviser to the government and the top court for all cases against the state.
And then there are two European top courts above the three french top courts: the European court of justice and the European court of human rights.
That is a lot of top courts.
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That is pretty normal. Germany has six top courts - the equivalents of your three plus the federal fiscal court, the federal labour court and the federal social court.
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It's quite common for countries to have different courts for different purposes. It may seem strange for Americans where courts are only involved when a complaint is filed (and then there's all the bullshit of whether the person who brought the case has standing and that sort of rubbish).
America could do well to have a Constitutional Council of its own, even better one that automatically reviews all of Trump's bullshit executive orders as the current process in America is too slow to capture blatantly uncon
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America could do well to have a Constitutional Council of its own, even better one that automatically reviews all of Trump's bullshit executive orders as the current process in America is too slow to capture blatantly unconstitutional issues.
Such an institution is difficult to design so that it remains fair. France's conseil constitutionnel is packed with old politicians chosen by the president, and presidents of the parilament's chambers. What can possibly go wrong?
Fines (Score:2)