EU reaches deal on new social media regulations

Intent of landmark legislation is to address societal harms seen on platforms

The European Union early Saturday reached a deal on landmark legislation that would force Facebook, YouTube and other internet services to combat misinformation, disclose how their services amplify divisive content and stop targeting online ads based on a person’s ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

The law, called 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 EU.

The law aims to end an era of self-regulation in which tech companies set their own policies about what content could stay up or be taken down. It stands out from other regulatory attempts by addressing online speech, an area largely off-limits in the United States because of First Amendment protections. Google, which owns YouTube, and Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, would face yearly audits for “systemic risks” linked to their businesses, while Amazon would confront new rules to stop the sale of illegal products.

The Digital Services Act is part of a one-two punch by the EU to address the societal and economic effects of the tech giants. Last month, the 27-nation bloc agreed to a different law, the Digital Markets Act, to counter what regulators see as anti-competitive behavior by the biggest tech firms, including their grip over app stores, online advertising and internet shopping.

Together, the new laws underscore how Europe is setting the standard for tech regulation globally. Frustrated by anti-competitive behavior, social media’s effect on elections and privacy-invading business models, officials spent more than a year negotiating policies that give them broad new powers to crack down on tech giants that are worth trillions of dollars and that are used by billions of people for communication, entertainment, payments and news.

“This will be a model,” Alexandra Geese, a Green party member of the European Parliament from Germany, said of the new law. Geese, who helped draft the Digital Services Act, said she had already spoken with legislators in Japan, India and other countries about the legislation.

The deal was reached after 16 hours of negotiations.

The moves contrast with the lack of action in the United States. Although

U.S. regulators have filed antitrust cases against Google and Meta, no comprehensive federal laws tackling the power of the tech companies have been passed.

Yet, even as European authorities gain newfound legal powers to rein in the tech behemoths, critics wondered how effective they will be. An estimated 230 new workers will be hired to enforce the new laws, a figure critics said was insufficient when compared with the resources available to Meta, Google and others.