EU Pushes More Censorship… To “Protect” You
by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 03/15/2018
On March 1, The European Commission — the unelected executive branch of the European Union — told social media companies to remove illegal online terrorist content within an hour, or risk facing EU-wide legislation on the topic. The ultimatum was part of a new set of recommendations that will apply to all forms of “illegal content” online, “from terrorist content, incitement to hatred and violence, child sexual abuse material, counterfeit products and copyright infringement.”
The European Commission said, “Considering that terrorist content is most harmful in the first hours of its appearance online, all companies should remove such content within one hour from its referral as a general rule”.
While the one-hour ultimatum is ostensibly only about terrorist content, this is how the European Commission motivated the new recommendations:
“The Juncker Commission made security a top priority from day one. It is the most basic and universal of rights to feel safe in your own home or when walking down the street. Europeans rightly expect their Union to provide that security for them – online and offline. The Commission has taken a number of actions to protect Europeans online – be it from terrorist content, illegal hate speech or fake news… we are continuously looking into ways we can improve our fight against illegal content online. Illegal content means any information which is not in compliance with Union law or the law of a Member State, such as content inciting people to terrorism, racist or xenophobic, illegal hate speech, child sexual exploitation… What is illegal offline is also illegal online”.
“Illegal hate speech”, is broadly defined by the European Commission as “incitement to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin”.
The internet companies have three months to deliver results and the European Commission will then decide whether it will introduce legislation. Incidentally, the three-month deadline, in May 2018, coincides with the deadline that the European Commission gave itself in 2017 on deciding whether the “Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech” should be made into legislation.
In May 2016, the European Commission and Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft, agreed on a “Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech” (Google+ and Instagram joined the Code of Conduct in January 2018). The Code of Conduct commits the social media companies to review and remove within 24 hours content that is deemed to be, “illegal hate speech”. According to the Code of Conduct, when companies receive a request to remove content, they must “assess the request against their rules and community guidelines and, where applicable, national laws on combating racism and xenophobia…” In other words, the social media giants act as voluntary censors on behalf of the European Union.
The Rest…HERE
