EU Set To Demand Internet Firms Act Faster To Remove Illegal Content (reuters.com)

Companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter could face European Union laws forcing them to be more proactive in removing illegal content if they do not do more to police what is available on the Internet. From a report: The European Union executive outlines in draft guidelines reviewed by Reuters how Internet firms should step up efforts with measures such as establishing trusted flaggers and taking voluntary measures to detect and remove illegal content. Proliferating illegal content, whether because it infringes copyright or incites terrorism, has sparked heated debate in Europe between those who want online platforms to do more to tackle it and those who fear it could impinge on free speech. The companies have significantly stepped up efforts to tackle the problem of late, agreeing to an EU code of conduct to remove hate speech within 24 hours and forming a global working group to combine their efforts remove terrorist content from their platforms.

Comments

lowest common denominator

[Anonymous Coward]

If any country can decide speech is illegal, we're just going to have the lowest common denominator.

Re:lowest common denominator

[cayenne8]

Yup...

Hate speech?

There is no such thing a "hate speech"...there is only speech.

And please do not confuse "hate speech" with incitement to violence against a group, they are two different things, and the latter is already illegal (at least in the US).

But voicing opinions, even if distasteful, should never be illegal and just because you find it in poor taste or against your morals, doesn't make it hate speech or something that should be banned or made illegal.

You should step back and think what speech you agree with now and is more common that could have been suppressed not that long ago if it had been banned like you are wanting to do now.

Re:lowest common denominator

[ctilsie242]

Even then, one country can decide all speech from another place is "illegal". Not to mention the religious conflicts. Then, there is the question of what hate speech is. Most people agree that live beheadings are hate speech, but the line can be drawn so far that anything disagreeing with a country's ideology can be considered that.

Then, there is the fact that this censorship doesn't really do much good. Look at how the Nazi sites went to the dark web, where they now can't be monitored or policed. Driving this stuff underground just means that LEOs have an exponentially harder job. It also will make people make something more robust than TOR for dark web sites, similar to how the eDonkey P2P network was tossed for decentralized tracking BitTorrent. I can see someone inventing a stateful, distributed, encrypted storage network that would trade cryptocurrency for drive space, and that being the place where censored stuff moves to.

Re:lowest common denominator

[rickb928]

"then, there is the question of what hate speech is. "

As the parent pointed out there is NO 'hate speech'. There is unpleasant, disagreeable, contrary speech, but hate speech is the term used to justify censorship.

And much of the EU would very much like to remove 'hate speech' as 'illegal speech' as soon as possible, to limit the exposure, resistance, and accountability of those who want to decide what is said.

Pure censorship, mostly, the rest is thinly disguised censorship.

Re: lowest common denominator

[niftydude]

Facebook allows the option of targetted areas down to 5km radius for advertisers, so they can easily comply with local govt censorship if they want to. You won't even notice.

The fastest way to ruin a good thing..

[Rick Schumann]

..is to get too many people involved in it.
47% of the people alive on the planet today have access to the internet -- call it 3.3 billion people.
I'd say that's more than enough to ruin the Internet, sooner or later. Which is what we're seeing here today.

Re:The fastest way to ruin a good thing..

[computational super]

I definitely miss the internet of the 90's. Well, not the speeds, but the people.

Trusted flagger

[PPH]

What is a trusted flagger? Is there a certification and licensing program in place? How about indemnity insurance should the flagger incorrectly call for a takedown and damage some group or the content hosting company as a result?

I'm all for it, but...

[CharlesAKAChuck]

define "illegal" when it pertains to the world wide internet. Once you define what is illegal, then sure let's have a legal process to remove the illegal content. Until then, stay away.

*sigh* Here we go again.

[fustakrakich]

Until we can unchain ourselves from the ISP, there is no hope. We need a real P2P internet with multiple routing that can't be shut down. Without it the tyrants will always win.