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(CANNES, France) — It was almost a strange sight; packed movie premieres and actors again walking the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival — maskless- — while throngs of photographers snapped away.

With going to the movies put on hold for more than a year, and the festival canceled last year due to the pandemic, even some of the stars were struck by what felt like a return to normal.

“I was a little overwhelmed last night, and I’m really glad that we’re here this year. Because I think we’ll all look back and remember launching out of COVID — and what a way to do it,” said actor Matt Damon, who teared up after the standing ovation he received at the premiere of his new film, “Stillwater.”

Beyond the glitz and glamour, the Cannes Film Festival is also home to the world’s biggest movie market, the Marché du Film. Set up inside the Palais des Festivals, a convention center behind the main theater where premieres are held, the marché is where thousands of directors, producers, sales agents and distributors from around the world try to get their movies made, bought, sold or distributed.

“The Marché du Film is really the business of film, we’re the less sexy and exciting part of the film festival,” said Monique White, senior vice president of distribution for California Pictures who’s been coming to Cannes for years.

This year, cinema’s power players were eager to get back to work, hoping the deals struck here will serve as evidence the business of film is also back. The industry took a massive hit during the pandemic — global theatrical revenue in the U.S. fell from $42.3 billion in 2019 to just $12 billion in 2020, according to the Motion Picture Association’s Annual Report — leaving film professionals scrambling to adjust.

“COVID-19 has forced more change on the film industry — from production and financing through distribution and exhibition — in 12 months than the business had seen in the previous decade,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter’s Europe bureau chief, Scott Roxborough.

Some argue perhaps the single biggest change was the streaming boom.

“COVID changed the way we watch anything now. Whether we’re watching on just the internet, on Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Hulu, whatever. We have more eyeballs on our computers and our phones,” said White.

While tensions between traditional theaters and streaming platforms had been growing for a while, the problem really came to a head during the pandemic, with the controversial online release of Universal Pictures’ “Trolls World Tour” movie in April 2020 marking the beginning of a new era and sending shockwaves through Hollywood.

AMC, the country’s largest cinema chain, responded by temporarily refusing to run Universal movies.

“There used to be more of a professional understanding that you would wait a period of time before you released,” said White. “But now it’s really subject to the production and the producer and how they want to release the film domestically.”

The feud between Universal and AMC was eventually resolved, but a number of other studios have since then followed suit. Disney, the parent company of ABC News, decided to release films like “Mulan” and “Luca” online, and WarnerMedia announced the company would release all of its 2021 films on HBO Max the same day they hit theaters.

The shift to digital has even prompted the Oscars to change their eligibility rules — whereas movies first had to be released in theaters to qualify for the awards competition, the Academy is now allowing movies released online to participate.

As a result, “Nomadland” which was released on Hulu, eventually won best picture, and Netflix won seven awards and 35 nominations, the most of any studio this year.

Recently announced Emmy nominations are reflecting a similar pattern with streaming services winning more nominations in 2021 than those of broadcast and cable combined.

The Cannes Film Festival, for its part, is maintaining requirements that a movie must first air in theaters to be able to qualify.

“Of course, the streaming companies exploded and they needed lot more product which is great because now they’re asking for more,” said Hernan Aguilar, a distributor focused on the Latin American market.

Aguilar said he sees an upside to the shift to streaming.

“In general it’s good this thing is happening, because cause more product is being asked for,” he said. “The demand is going up, so in that sense, that’s good.”

The change is causing a certain uneasiness in the industry, with some fearing streaming services could not only put theaters at risk, but also the likes of producers and distributors. A number of streaming platforms are now producing their own content, instead of buying films made by independent filmmakers.

It’s an issue that’s top of mind in Cannes this year.

“Cinema and screening platforms can coexist. At one time, there was a thinking that TV was going to kill cinema. This stuff is not new. It’s all cycle,” said director Spike Lee, president of the Cannes Film Festival jury this year.

Some argue studios won’t be able to continue bypassing theaters, as there’s just no substitute for box office revenue. The recently released blockbuster “F9” — released exclusively in theaters — raked in $70 million on opening weekend.

White predicts streaming services will eventually have to raise their prices.

“They’re all gonna go up. And before you know it, let’s say in the next couple of years, it’s gonna be like 20 bucks for Netflix, I’m sure. That’s not gonna be sustainable,” she said.

Aguilar thinks it’ll be the opposite.

“I think what’s gonna happen is there’s going to be more and more streaming platforms and with competition the prices will go down but I think it’s really not expensive at all right now compared to tickets in the cinema,” he said.

Another big question: will streaming change the type of content that’s being produced?

“Streaming is definitely … if you see the quality of the content you’re seeing, you’re seeing more lower quality in terms of the story or how things are done,” said Juan Pablo Cadaveira, producer and co-founder of Blue Productions.

It’s unclear what will happen next, but some are hopeful the end of the pandemic will mean a return to theaters, pointing out it was the Great Depression that inspired Hollywood’s Golden Age.

“I just think now though hopefully with things opening up, we’re gonna be less on [streaming platforms] than we were before. No one wants to be in a small apartment. They want to go out and see people and go to the movies,” said White.

“I think as people go to church for religion, you go to the cinema to watch a good film, but it’s true that for me people are going to do it less and less because it’s so much easier to watch a good film in your house,” said Aguilar.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Misinformation – false information spread regardless of intent – is rampant across popular social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Most speech, whether true or false, is protected under the U.S. legal system.

But questions about inaccurate information, spread maliciously or not, and its effects on many facets of our lives have led to efforts by social media platforms, fact-checkers and others to try to crack down.

The territory is murky and has ignited an intense debate as technology companies struggle to define the problem and attempt to get a handle on the flood of false and misleading information.

In the U.S., the situation came to a head during the 2020 presidential election cycle when social media platforms decided to fact-check and remove election-related statements from former President Donald Trump and ultimately decided to suspend or ban him in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol for tweets that ran counter to the company’s glorification of violence policy. Facebook later announced the suspension would be lifted in two years under certain conditions.

The move led to an outcry, largely from conservatives as well as civil libertarians about free speech and the rights of social media companies to regulate what has become what many consider the new public square.

Misinformation has become such a crisis, in fact, that the U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, recently issued a warning about false information surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. And President Biden Friday said it was “killing people,” a description Facebook took exception to.

Some governments, however, have taken steps to go even further, and there are fears of using the concept of misinformation broadly to target dissent.

In recent years, Singapore, for example, implemented a law that requires platforms to remove certain posts that go against “public interest” such as security threats or the public’s perception of the government.

Similarly, Russia can legally fine those who show “blatant disrespect” online toward the state.

India takes on misinformation

In February, India, the world’s largest democracy, implemented new rules to regulate online content, allowing the government to censor what it claims to be misinformation.

Under the rules, large social media companies must appoint Indian citizens to a compliance role, remove content within 36 hours of legal notice and also set up system to respond to complaints, according to Reuters.

These restrictions give the government more power, in some cases, to dictate what can and cannot be circulated on digital platforms in the country.

For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that the COVID-19 variant “B.1.617,” now known as delta, was first detected in India last year.

According to Reuters, in May 2021, the Indian government sent a letter to social media companies demanding that all content that names or implies “India Variant,” as it became commonly (but not officially) known, be removed from platforms, calling that moniker “FALSE.”

In another case, late last year, farmers in India clashed with police over new laws that they believe will exploit their practices and reduce income while giving power to large corporations. In February, the Indian government issued an emergency order that demanded Twitter remove posts from the platform that used the hashtag “#farmergenocide.”

The government said in a statement that while India values the freedom of speech, expression “is not absolute and subject to reasonable restrictions.”

A Twitter spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News that when a valid legal request is received, it is reviewed under both Twitter Rules and local law. Should the content violate Twitter’s rules, it may be removed from the platform.

“If it is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of the Twitter Rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only,” they continued. “In all cases, we notify the account holder directly so they’re aware that we’ve received a legal order pertaining to the account.”

Separately, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, has sued the Indian government, which is looking to trace its users, who use encrypted messages. The government wants to have the ability to identify people who “credibly accused of wrong doing,” according to Reuters. Although the Indian government said it will respond to the lawsuit, it hasn’t done so yet.

Krishnesh Bapat, a legal fellow with the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), an Indian digital liberties organization that seeks to ensure technology respects fundamental rights, highlighted the implications of the WhatsApp case.

“This is one of the most problematic consequences of these rules,” Bapat said. “Several experts have suggested that the only way to implement this would be to remove encryption.”

End-to-end encryption is a key feature for WhatsApp users, as it protects private conversations from being accessed by any entity outside the chat. WhatsApp claims the new rules are unconstitutional and a clear breach to user privacy.

“India is a big cautionary tale for how we have to be really careful of the most well-intentioned regulatory power,” said David Greene, senior staff attorney and civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “We used to say, ‘well that’s not a threat to democratic societies.’ I don’t think we can say that anymore, India’s a democratic society.”

ABC News could not immediately reach the IT Ministry for comment.

Difficulty in regulating

Platforms rely heavily on users flagging potentially harmful posts that break community guidelines, and that self-regulatory model may be the best bet for the future of content regulation, Greene said, as opposed to government or institutional regulation.

Similarly, A Yale Law review published earlier this year explains that a self-regulatory model should be considered to combat the spread of misinformation in India. The review says that implementing such a model should “ensure that the ‘outcomes-based’ code is not vague or tilted to serve state interests, and does not incentivize platforms to adopt an overly heavy approach to removing content. The outcomes should be built around common objectives, and should provide flexibility for platforms to develop protocols and technological tools to achieve them.”

The New York State Bar Association recently suggested that government policy and oversight can be just as important as a self-regulatory model when dealing with misinformation. It also mentions that combatting misinformation is not solely for one entity to address, claiming that it will require corporations, governments, educators and journalists to work together in an effort to prevent the continued spread of harmful, inaccurate information.

“Most democratic legal systems have robust free speech,” Greene said. “We find a lot of protection for false statements, and this is supposed to protect people because mistakes are inevitable. False statements have to actually cause a specific and direct harm before they’re actionable.”

This means that there must be a clear intent of defamation, written or spoken, in order for legal action to be taken, which is historically difficult to prove. In the U.S., libel laws in particular differ state to state, which adds an extra layer of complexity to any attempt at content regulation.

Greene also suggested that given the difficulty in casting information as verifiably false as well as the overwhelming number of posts that need to be reviewed, it’s nearly impossible for platforms to regulate content well.

In February 2018, the first Content Moderation & Removal at Scale conference was hosted by the Santa Clara University High Tech Law Institute. Experts and advocates gathered to “explore how internet companies operationalize the moderation and removal” of user-generated content. They developed what’s now known as the Santa Clara Principles.

The model, which is endorsed by EFF among other notable groups, provides three guiding principles for content moderators – being transparent about the numbers of people permanently suspended or banned, proper notice and reason for doing so and a “meaningful” appeals process.

Greene says that the Santa Clara Principles can be utilized as a guideline for companies in an effort to preserve basic human rights in content moderation. Alternatively, regulation that involves prescreening or filtering posts can have serious human rights implications, but although a post may include false information that contains offensive language appearing to hurt certain people or groups, it’s usually not illegal.

“By mandating filters, users are subjected to automated decision making and potentially harmful profiling,” Greene explained. “This has a chilling effect on speech and undermines the freedom to receive impartial information. When knowing to be censored, users change behavior or abstain from communicating freely.”

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