The bill would have to be so large and so in depth to properly cover everything, or it would have to be way to intrusive and lock down everything. If it's not specific enough, people who don't know the exact rules and get penalized, will get extremely upset, especially if it effects their job or business.

It's not bad per say, but it would be a huge pain in the butt for any type of media. The problem is it could easily be bypassed though. All you have to do is get someone else to do the transaction for you, or if your a business, just start another sub/side/separate company with a completely unrelated name and nobody is the wiser, unless they do the research, which they aren't doing now anyway. Even if the bill says the top source has to be named, all they have to do is create 10 maybe 20 different sub sources and transfer the money/info from top to bottom. Having to spit that list out every single time will anger the media and will really anger the viewers to a level that they may just stop watching altogether, which would also hurt the non "fake news".

Well knowing how fair they will be is something you won't find out until it's potentially too late, if they decide to use it to their political advantage. Just imagine if Trump announced he was going to do the same thing. A lot of Americans would go bonkers, assuming the worst of course, and even if the 'fake news' was handled properly and responsibly, if Trump won again, it would be spun against him like he used it to his advantage.

Putting a cap on the amount of money for sponsored content is also quite scary. What content exactly? Only for 'fake news'? If it's for both 'fake news' and non 'fake news', then what's the difference? The fact that Macron specifically said  “If we want to protect liberal democracies, we must be strong and have clear rules,” just shows he isn't being honest already. Imagine if Macron said something like because there are more vehicle accidents on Tuesday's in France let's say, that every Tuesday from now on, the speed limit will be half of what it is now, plus there are more accidents immediately after the opening days of movies about cars, so on those days the speed limit is cut in half as well, and if you get caught speeding during these times, you lose your license. Can you imagine how horribly that would go over? The big difference here is that most people agree on things like the speed limits as they stand and that's due to scientific research and making the car and part companies accountable for their performance. People will not be ok with being told what they can and can not say, and listen to or view, especially when the definition of fact,truth,fake,news,etc, isn't all that clear to the people and is bent and broken constantly by the journalists and media corps they work for, who are free to do and say whatever they please without being held accountable. Since when did freedom of the press become more important than freedom of the people? The point of the press being free is so that the people remain free, not to slowly enslave the people.

So Macron proves to be just the kind of right-wing psychopath people believed him to be.
If he seriously passes some "fake news" laws, I'm already curious which extremely vague definition of "fake news" he will use. Hint: It will not actually require an information to be a "lie", probably not even to be factually false.

The current usage of the phrase "fake news" is extremely similar to the Nazis' usage of the word "Lügenpresse". Even the literal meaning of both phrases is almost identical! It's hardly more than a way for governments to control the "Deutungshoheit", and try to suppress information and sources they consider a danger for their agenda.

Like 95% of news is fake, but it shouldn't be censored because of that. People should just be a bit less gullible when reading stuff, but banning is taking it too far.

Plus, as others in this thread have said, the committee or whatever who decided what was fake would inevitably be biased as hell.

It would be easy if people weren't stupid enough to believe everything they read on the internet. But sadly, this isn't the case, so judges will need to block fake news. There's a difference between having an opinion about something, and straight-up lying.

Agreed, as a european i support this myself. Only ones against this are those with agenda or people who think a politician like Trump is worth listening to.

Oh boy. The problem with "fake news" is that the term is highly political: What's fake news for a left-wing liberal is not so for a very conservative person - and vice versa!

When Huffington Post takes a study that claims 45% of domestic violence victims are men and distorts that by saying "but women never start, they only defend themselves! Thus, 90% of victims are women!"... is that fake news?

When a right-wing organisation publishes a map that shows "terrorism by immigrants" and adds stuff that wouldn't be considered terrorism (or stuff that's basically any crime simply involving an immigrant, not just those *commited* by immigrants)... is that fake news?

When news organisation publishes a video of Trump and Shinzo Abe feeding fish and says Trump committed a Faux Pas by pouring his whole box of fish food into the pond - while conveniently editing / cutting out the part where Abe does the some things *before* Trump... is that fake news?

When a far-right politician makes outrageous tweets that get censored and then claims Twitter is left-wing biased because they allow pro-communism posts.... is that fake news?

Even science is political because the scientists are: Let a left-wing and a right-wing institute conduct two separate studies about the same topic and they'll probably come to very different conclusions - which one is fake news? Which one is "real news"? And even more importantly: Why don't we let people form their own opinions? What about freedom of speech and freedom of thought - no matter which side gets the short end of the stick? If the creationist movement suddenly gains popularity in France, will the teachings of evolution be considered Fake News?

There are just too many ways to abuse such a law and when it comes to political topics, there is no such simple thing as an objective truth. I can't think of a rightwing biased example right now, but "Data Journalism" is a good example here: Nate Silver (from fivethirtyeight.com) always was proud of himself because he was an "objective" data journalist - but when Trump was the frontrunner in the republican primaries Silver totally ignored all the data and distorted it and said "Trump will never be the presidential candidate". I'm still a huge fan of that website but that was just a disaster waiting to happen and everyone could see it by looking at the data sets. So... was that fake news? That Nate Silver deserve to be censored or go to prison because his political views got the better of him? I think absolutely not.

This is basically what you said: "Only those with different political views than me would be against this." You realise everyone has an agenda in politics? Anti-Immigration people, socialists, Nazis, Feminists, Libertarians... they all have an agenda. If you have no agenda you are not political. 

So, what if Donald Trump was the one proposing the law? Would you still support it? You know that Trump considers CNN fake news, right? Would you still be all over this? What if the next president / chancellor / largest party of you country is right-wing populist? Because those people will decide what's fake news then.

Birthed freedom and democracy?
Just so you know, it was the most messy birth in history.

They just need to take advice from Chinese comunist party, they are masters of blocking news they don't want and monitor what their citizens do online.

Looks like many of you don't know what is the issue behind this. It's not aimed against individuals who state their opinions, conspiracy theories, etc.. The problem is the organised disinformation/propaganda that is (mainly) spread by Russia.

Putin and his inner circle got scared in 2011 when there were big protests against him in Russia, and many of the North African and Middle-East dictators were ousted by the people. Then in 2014 when Ukraine broke away from Russia's influence zone and the "anti-West" attitude/tactic was put in full action, the disinformation-flood from Russia started.

This is done by "the troll-factories" that employ hundreds/thousands of people and are located in Russia (some people who worked there have come public about it). They also use bots who do the work automatically, and probably pay individual people/sites located outside of Russia to spread "the message". Russia has also started to support almost every anti-EU (European Union)/anti-west/far right movement, and target the dissinformation-/hacking-campaings towards elections in Europe and USA.

The main goal of this is to keep Putin (and also other autocrats/dictators) in power, cause division in the EU- and other Western countries (the break-up of EU would be Putins dream, because it would be much easier for Russia to influence decisions of countries who are "on their own" and not part of a big union) and undermine people's trust in democracy (The less people, especially the Russians, want a democratic system the better it's for Putin. All of Russia's allies are also basically run by dictators/autocrats, so that's also a good reason to weaken democracy. Or can you think of situation where a country that is democratically run would like to become an close ally to a country run by a dictator.).