DEAL TARGETS HATE SPEECH, DISINFORMATION

EU officials strike pact to rein in social media companies

The European Union reached a landmark deal early Saturday to take aim at hate speech, disinformation and other harmful content online that would force big tech companies to police themselves harder, make it easier for users to flag problems and empower regulators to punish noncompliance with billions in fines.

EU officials finally clinched the agreement in principle in the early hours of Saturday over the final details of the Digital Services Act, which will overhaul the digital rulebook for 27 countries and cement Europe’s reputation as the global leader in reining in the power of social media companies and other digital platforms, such as Facebook, Google and Amazon.

“With the DSA, the time of big online platforms behaving like they are ‘too big to care’ is coming to an end,” said EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.

EU Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager added that “with today’s agreement we ensure that platforms are held accountable for the risks their services can pose to society and citizens.”

The act is the EU’S third significant law targeting the tech industry, a notable contrast with the U.S., where lobbyists representing Silicon Valley’s interests have largely succeeded in keeping federal lawmakers at bay.

While the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have filed major antitrust actions against Google and Facebook, Congress remains politically divided on efforts to address competition, online privacy, disinformation and more.

The EU’S new rules, which are designed to protect Internet users and their “fundamental rights online,” should make tech companies more accountable for content created by users and amplified by their platforms’ algorithms.

Breton said they will have plenty of stick to back up their laws.

“It entrusts the Commission with supervising very large platforms, including the possibility to impose effective and dissuasive sanctions of up to 6 percent of global turnover or even a ban on operating in the EU single market in case of repeated serious breaches,” he said.

The tentative agreement was reached between the EU parliament and member states. It still needs to be officially approved by those institutions but should pose no political problem.

The need to regulate Big Tech more effectively came into sharper focus after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when Russia was found to have used social media platforms to try to influence the country’s vote. Tech companies like Facebook and Twitter promised to crack down on disinformation, but the problems have only worsened. During the pandemic, health misinformation blossomed and again the companies were slow to act, cracking down after years of allowing anti-vaccine falsehoods to thrive on their platforms.

Under the EU law, governments would be able to request companies take down a wide range of content that would be deemed illegal, including material that promotes terrorism, child sexual abuse, hate speech and commercial scams. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter would have to give users tools to flag such content in an “easy and effective way” so that it can be swiftly removed. Online marketplaces like Amazon would have to do the same for dodgy products, such as counterfeit sneakers or unsafe toys.

The Digital Services Act would also ban ads targeted at minors, as well as ads targeted at users based on their gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. It would also ban deceptive techniques companies use to nudge people into doing things they didn’t intend to, such as signing up for services that are easy to opt into, but hard to decline.