Moderation rules and point of contact

Single point of contact

Point of contact for users and for authorities, under articles 11 and 12 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 on digital services: contact@aubeactu.fr. Exchanges may be held in French or in English.

No comment is read before it goes online

AubeActu's comment spaces are spaces for readers' personal contributions. The newsroom exercises no prior control over them. A message appears as soon as it is posted.

This is a legal choice before it is a practical one. Article 93-3 of the French law of 29 July 1982 shields the publication director from liability as principal author for messages posted in a space identified as one for personal contributions, provided he had no actual knowledge of them before they went online, or acted promptly to remove them once he knew. Reading every message before publication would not be unlawful, but it would make the publication director the principal author of what every reader writes. So we do not do it.

The only mechanism applied before publication

An automatic filter holds back certain messages: a word list, a link threshold, an anti-spam score. It is entirely mechanical, involves no human reading, and the rule that fired is recorded for every message held. A message held in this way and then published after human review falls outside the regime described above, for that message alone; we keep count of them.

The crime, justice, health and politics sections are closed to comments by default: closing a space avoids the risk, whereas reading it would transfer the liability to the newspaper.

Reader contributions

Articles, photographs and videos proposed by registered readers are, by contrast, reviewed before anything is published: the newsroom checks them, accepts them, asks for changes or turns them down. A published contribution is published under the editorial responsibility of the publication director.

Reporting content

A "Report content" link appears at the foot of every page of the site, and under every article, association page and event page. The reporting form collects the four elements listed in article 16(2) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065: why you consider the content unlawful, its exact address, your name and e-mail address, and a statement of good faith. A report that does not allow the content or the alleged illegality to be identified is examined all the same.

Our turnaround

• Promptly, as soon as we become aware of it, for manifestly unlawful content: incitement to hatred or violence, glorification of terrorism, disclosure of a person's home or workplace, child sexual abuse material.
• As soon as possible, for any other report. We do not announce a figure in hours: nothing in the moderation log measures the age of a report today, so we could not prove we had met it.

Every report is handled diligently, objectively and in a non-arbitrary manner, as article 16(6) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 requires.

Every decision is entered in a timestamped log: who, what, when, on what grounds, following which report. That log is the proof of prompt removal. Content covered by article 6, IV, A of the LCEN — glorification of terrorism, hatred, offences against minors among others — is also reported to the competent authorities. Any suspicion of a criminal offence threatening the life or safety of a person is promptly reported to the law enforcement or judicial authorities, with the information we hold (article 18 of the same regulation).

What we remove

• Insult, defamation, denigration of a named or identifiable person.
• Incitement to hatred, violence or discrimination; threats.
• Glorification of crime, denial of crimes against humanity.
• Disclosure of a third party's personal data.
• Infringement of the presumption of innocence of an unconvicted person.
• Sexual content; any content involving a minor.
• Copyright infringement, disguised advertising, canvassing, spam, multiple accounts.

Statement of reasons: every decision is explained in writing

Every decision that removes, hides or demotes a comment or a contribution, or that turns down a proposed contribution, is notified to its author by e-mail, at the latest when it takes effect, whether it comes from a member of the newsroom, from the automatic filter or from the automatic hiding on the third report. This is the statement of reasons of article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065. It states:

• the decision taken and its scope: removal, hiding or refusal, and its duration where relevant;
• the facts and circumstances relied on, and whether the decision follows a report or a check by the newsroom;
• whether automated means were involved, for instance the filter described above;
• the ground: the rule of law concerned, or the clause of the terms of use applied, and why the content breaches it;
• the available remedies.

Remedies. You may ask for the decision to be reviewed by replying to the e-mail that notified it or by writing to contact@aubeactu.fr: the newsroom re-examines the case and answers in writing, with its reasons. Going to court remains open to you at any time, without having to go through this review first.

Scope of our European obligations

AubeActu is an online newspaper published under the editorial responsibility of its publication director. For the comments, the contributions and the deposits readers leave on it, it provides a hosting service within the meaning of article 3(g)(iii) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065: it stores information provided by readers, at their request. Articles 11, 12, 14, 16, 17 and 18 therefore apply to all of it, with no exemption of any kind.

The comments section is not an online platform within the meaning of article 3(i): making comments public is a minor and purely ancillary feature of the principal service, the publication of news under the editorial responsibility of the publisher. That is the very example given in recital 13 of the regulation, which cites the comments section of an online newspaper.

The deposit desks — an article submitted by a registered reader, a car boot sale entered by its organiser, a classified ad placed by a business — are not filed under the same argument: calling them a minor feature would be convenient, and arguable. So we state what is the case. None of these deposits appears without a human decision: the newsroom reads each one, accepts it or refuses it, whatever appears does so under the editorial responsibility of the publication director, and readers never publish directly for one another. And should those desks nonetheless be regarded as an online platform, the additional obligations of Chapter III, Section 3 — articles 19 to 28 — would not apply either: its article 19(1) excludes them for micro and small enterprises within the meaning of Recommendation 2003/361/EC, with the sole exception of article 24(3), and article 29 does the same for Section 4. That ground is invoked second, without giving up the first.

Articles 11 and 12 (points of contact), 14 (terms and conditions, also published in a machine-readable format), 16 (notice and action), 17 (statement of reasons) and 18 (notification of suspicions of criminal offences) do apply, with no exemption, and are implemented on this page and the pages it links to.

The annual transparency report of article 15(1) is not required of providers that qualify as micro or small enterprises within the meaning of Recommendation 2003/361/EC and that are not very large online platforms (article 15(2)). Until the publisher has declared that it falls within that category, we do not rely on it, and the data for the report is kept up to date: every decision is entered in the timestamped moderation log. The obligations that depend neither on size nor on qualification — articles 11, 12, 14, 16, 17 and 18 — are met in every case. This scope would be reviewed if the service changed in nature, for instance by opening a space where readers publish directly for one another, without review.

Retention of identification data

Article 6, V, A of the LCEN and decree no. 2021-1362 of 20 October 2021 require us to retain the data allowing an author of content to be identified, and to disclose it on judicial requisition. The applicable periods and purge arrangements are set out in the privacy policy. This data is accessible only to the publication director and only on requisition; it serves no other purpose.