Europe Could Fine Tech Companies That Don't Remove Terrorist Content in One Hour

The European Union has made a litany of warnings to online platforms, urging them to better moderate their hellish platforms or else. But these have all been voluntary guidelines with the looming threat of enforcing “necessary legislation” if tech companies don’t shape up. This week, the EU’s executive body got a step closer to making good on that promise.

gizmodo.com|Melanie Ehrenkranz

The proposal focuses specifically on hampering the spread of terrorist content, again giving platforms one hour to take the illegal content down. At the moment it’s simply a proposal, requiring support from member states and the EU parliament to become legislation, according to TechCrunch.

Earlier guidelines seemingly and explicitly targeted giants in the tech space, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft, which makes sense, given the dominance of their platforms. But the Commission’s latest proposal extends beyond just the big ones, stating that all hosting service providers that operate in the Union would be held accountable by this legislation, “regardless of their place of establishment or their size.”

The proposal states that while terrorist content should be quickly removed from platforms, companies should still maintain the data for six months in the event that it was mistakenly or wrongfully scrubbed so that they can reinstate it.

Websites that fail to promptly take down terrorist content would face fines — with the level of penalties being determined by EU Member States (Germany has already legislated to enforce social media hate speech takedowns within 24 hours, setting the maximum fine at €50M).

Although, in a section on penalties, the Commission suggests systematic failure to comply should be subject to financial penalties of up to 4% of the hosting service provider’s global turnover for their last business year.

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...

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