Social media platforms continue to struggle with the unenviable balancing act that pits free expression against content moderation. The European Union may soon make this endeavor all the more fraught with its proposal to deputize service providers as censors of terrorist content.
The plan, which was unveiled last year, would obligate “hosting service providers” like Facebook and Twitter to remove any “information which is used to incite and glorify the commission of terrorist offences, encouraging the contribution to and providing instructions for committing terrorist offences as well as promoting participation in terrorist groups” within one hour or face severe financial penalties up to 4 percent of the service provider’s global annual turnover.
EU member states would be required to create or designate a “competent authority” to issue takedown requests to hosting service providers—in other words, to instruct websites to censor content. Additionally, hosting service providers would be expected to develop “proactive measures” to prevent terrorist content from being posted in the future. Andrea O’Sullivan explains how this is likely to go horribly wrong.
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