“We are at the beginning of history”, recalls Arcom president Roch-Olivier Maistre

The president of the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication spoke as part of the Media day in Seine, organized at Les Echos and Radio France on Wednesday.

“We are at the beginning of history” of the regulation of online content, recalled the president of the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom) Roch-Olivier Maistre, during an interview organized Wednesday, November 22 as part of Media Day in Seine , organized at Les Echos and Radio France on Wednesday November 22.

A new regulatory framework came into force on August 25 for very large platforms with the Digital service act, European Regulation on digital services, unprecedented legislation in the world. For smaller platforms, it will come into force on February 17, he returned during this interview to the philosophy and challenges of this new regulation.

“We saw the excesses of these actors in a model of absolute freedom”, he said, recalling in particular the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He summarizes the new European philosophy towards illegal online platforms and content as follows: “I, Europe, on my continent, ask you to act. To prohibit the dissemination of illicit content. What is prohibited in the physical world is prohibited in the digital world.”

“The lines are moving”

The 2018 French law on the manipulation of information has already significantly changed things, according to Roch-Olivier Maistre: “The lines are moving. We cannot say that these platforms are completely immobile. If I look at the 2022 electoral process with the presidential election, it has nothing to do with what happened in 2017. Every time we have had issues of manipulation of information linked to the electoral process, they have always been reactive.”

Artificial intelligence rather represents an opportunity according to the president of Arcom who “wants to have a lucid, but optimistic outlook”recalling that “artificial intelligence is central to the functioning of algorithms” and therefore already allows progress in terms of regulation, “the director of artificial intelligence at Méta explained to us that artificial intelligence tools already eliminate, without even seeing them appear on the platform, more than 95% of problematic content”.

However, he underlines the growing difficulty encountered with the X platform, which has replaced Twitter since its acquisition by Elon Musk: “I really make the difference between X before Elon Musk, and X after Musk. Before, we had contacts in front of us, with whom we were in regular contact. “we can count on the fingers of one hand, but the people we talk to change very quickly. So yes, there is a subject”.