Call For Tech Giants To Face Taxes Over Extremist Content (bbc.com)

Internet companies should face a tax punishment for failing to deal with the threat of terrorism in the UK, security minister Ben Wallace has said. From a report: Mr Wallace said firms such as Facebook, Google and YouTube were too slow to remove radical content online, forcing the government to act instead. While tech firms were "ruthless profiteers," governments were spending millions policing the web, he added. Facebook said Mr Wallace was wrong to say it put profits before safety. YouTube said violent extremism was a "complex problem" and addressing it was a "critical challenge for us all." In an interview with the Sunday Times, Mr Wallace said tech giants were failing to help prevent the radicalisation of people online. "Because content is not taken down as quickly as they could do," he claimed, "we're having to de-radicalise people who have been radicalised. That's costing millions."

Comments

AKA Censorship

[Paleolibertarian]

Threatening content providers with SPECIAL tax treatment if they have the wrong content is censorship plain and simple.

Re:AKA Censorship

[arth1]

Sure it's censorship. That's the whole point of it. The big difference between many European countries and the US is that they are more open about doing censorship when deemed beneficial for society as a whole. WWII happened on their own soil, and they want to take steps to prevent it from happening again.

But most Americans appear to be for censorship as long as it doesn't affect them, and isn't called censorship. Suppressing science, suppressing medical information, suppressing sexuality, suppressing freethinkers, suppressing seditious speak, ... that is apparently fine. But suppressing hate speech is not?