Operators of online platforms in the EU must in future delete “terrorist content” within an hour by order of any authorities from a member state without judicial approval. The lead committee for civil liberties, justice and home affairs of the EU Parliament voted on Monday for the draft of a corresponding regulation. 54 MPs were for, 13 against with one abstention.

Negotiators from Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the Commission agreed on the details of the draft in December after a long dispute. The deletion requests can relate to texts, images as well as audio or video recordings including live streaming that incite or contribute to terrorist acts or contain instructions such as for the construction of bombs or firearms. Calls to join a terrorist organization are also affected.

Internet platforms are not generally obliged to monitor content. However, if they are principally exposed to terrorist content, they must take special measures to protect their services from being spread. The companies should decide for themselves which instruments to use. It is not expressly specified to use “automated tools”. The MEPs campaigned for this clause to make the upload filters feared as “censorship machines” at least not compulsory.

Also outside the EU The deletion orders can also be directed against service providers such as Amazon, Facebook, Google with YouTube or Twitter, who have their headquarters outside the EU. Operators of online forums on which users are allowed to leave comments or upload content are also included. The country in which the host provider is located should check foreign deletion requests for their legality and confirm or reject them within 24 hours. In the latter case, the operator would only have to block access to the reported content in the country that made the request.

If a deletion request contains serious errors, legal clarification is possible. Small and medium-sized companies are required to delete terrorist propaganda “as soon as possible” without a strict time limit if they can prove operational reasons for such an exception. If an authorized authority issues a deletion order to a provider for the first time, it should generally inform the provider at least twelve hours in advance about the procedure and applicable deadlines. The requests may not relate to journalistic and artistic content as well as polemical and satirical expressions of opinion.

Criticism of civil rights activists The French civil rights organization La Quadrature du Net criticizes the decision that the one-hour deadline is unrealistic and difficult to meet. Service providers and website operators would be forced to “proactively censor all potentially illegal content” due to the threat of high fines. To do this, they are likely to use “automated mass surveillance tools developed by Google and Facebook”. Such power transferred to the police could lead to the censorship of political opponents and social movements. The French Constitutional Court overturned a comparable national regulation in June.

Despite important partial successes achieved by Parliament, “the ultra-fast cross-border deletion orders without a judge’s reservation threaten the freedom of opinion and freedom of the press on the Internet”, complained the MEP Patrick Breyer from the Pirate Party. The Greens group, which the lawyer has joined, therefore voted against the project. Unfortunately, such censorship threatens to catch on, as it is likely to be introduced in general with the Digital Services Act (DSA). The Council and the parliamentary plenary still have to confirm the draft, for which the committee recommendation is an important preliminary decision.

(anw)