New E.U. law forces Meta and Google to combat misinformation

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Government getting involved in regulating speech. What could go wrong?

digitalSisyphus

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4 years ago
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  Governments have been involved in regulating speech for decades and for good reason. Products or ads making false or damaging claims. Defamation and slander. Shouting "fire" in a theater. Fraud and many other forms of crime.
  
  There's a balance and it'll never be perfect. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to improve things. Charlatans will always attempt to steal and lie; without a third-party enforcer, it'd be far worse.
  
  patmcmanus
  
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  4 years ago
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About time. The U.S. should do this too.

denisebakersmith

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4 years ago
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There've been some heated IH discussions on free speech. This new law has some huge implications for speech in online spaces.

"The Digital Services Act is intended to address social media’s societal harms by requiring companies to more aggressively police their platforms for illicit content or risk billions of dollars in fines. Tech companies would be compelled to set up new policies and procedures to remove flagged hate speech, terrorist propaganda and other material defined as illegal by countries within the European Union."

Presumably, these companies will sue and it'll end up in court for a while. But regardless, I imagine this will change things for Meta, Google, Amazon, and other companies in the U.S. and other countries outside of the E.U.

It'll be interesting to see how the law is enforced and its impact in the long run.

Thoughts on policing speech in this way?

Bobby Burch

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4 years ago
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