European Content Removal Laws Are Scrubbing The Internet Of Completely Legal Content
from the because-of-course-this-is-how-it-would-turn-out dept
A lot of laws have been passed in Europe that regulate the content American companies can carry. Most of these laws were passed to tamp down on speech that would be otherwise legal in the United States, but not so much in Europe where free speech rights aren’t given the same sort of protections found in the US.
Since most of the larger tech companies maintained overseas offices, they were subject to these laws. Those laws targeted everything from terrorist-related content to “hate speech” to whatever is currently vexing legislators. Attached to these mandates were hefty fines and the possibility of being asked to exit these countries completely.
Of course, the most important law governing content takedown demands was passed much, much earlier. I’m not talking about the CDA and Section 203 immunity. No, it’s a law that required no input from legislators or lobbyists.
The law of unintended consequences has been in full force since the beginning of time. But it’s never considered to be part of the legislative process, despite hundreds of years of precedence. So, while the consequences are unintended, they should definitely be expected. Somehow, they never are.
And that brings us to this report [PDF] from The Future of Free Speech, a non-partisan think tank operating from the friendly confines of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. (h/t Reason)
Legislators in three European countries have made many content-related demands of social media services over the past decade-plus. The end result, however, hasn’t been the eradication of “illegal” content, so much as it has been the eradication of speech that does not run afoul of this mesh network of takedown-focused laws.
When you demand communication services respond quickly to vaguely written laws, the expected outcome is exactly what’s been observed here: the proactive removal of content, a vast majority of which doesn’t violate any of the laws these services are attempting to comply with.
This analysis found that legal online speech made up most of the removed content from posts on Facebook and YouTube in France, Germany, and Sweden. Of the deleted comments examined across platforms and countries, between 87.5% and 99.7%, depending on the sample, were legally permissible.
Equally unsurprising is this breakdown of the stats, which notes that Germany’s content removal laws (which have been in place longer and are much more strict due to its zero-tolerance approach to anything Nazi-adjacent) tend to result in highest percentage of collateral damage.
The highest proportion of legally permissible deleted comments was observed in Germany, where 99.7% and 98.9% of deleted comments were found to be legal on Facebook and YouTube, respectively. This could reflect the impact of the German Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) on the removal practices of social media platforms which may over-remove content with the objective of avoiding the legislation’s hefty fine. In comparison, the corresponding figures for Sweden are 94.6% for both Facebook and YouTube. France has the lowest percentage of legally permissible deleted comments, with 92.1% of the deleted comments in the French Facebook sample and 87.5% of the deleted comments French YouTube sample.
This isn’t just a very selective sampling of content likely to be of interest to the three countries examined in this report. Nearly 1.3 million YouTube and Facebook comments were utilized for this study. It’s a relatively microscopic in terms of comments generated daily by both platforms but large enough (especially when restrained to three European countries) to determine content removal patterns.
The researchers discovered that more than half the comments removed by these platforms under these countries’ laws were nothing more than the sort of thing that makes the internet world go round, so to speak:
Among the deleted comments, the majority were classified as “general expressions of opinion.” In other words, these were statements that did not contain linguistic attacks, hate speech or illegal content, such as expressing the support for a controversial candidate in the abstract. On average, more than 56% of the removed comments fall into this category.
So, the question is: are these policies actually improving anything? More to the point, are they even achieving the stated goals of the laws? The researchers can’t find any evidence that supports a theory that collateral damage may be acceptable if it helps these governments achieve their aims. Instead, the report suggests things will continue to get worse because the geopolitical environment is in constant flux, which means the goalposts for content moderation are similarly always in motion while the punishments for non-compliance remain unchanged. And that combination pretty much ensures what’s been observed here will only get worse.
[M]oderation of social media is understood by several countries as a delicate balance between freedom of expression, security, and protection of minorities. However, recent events and geopolitical developments could disrupt this perceived balance. National security concerns have caused governments to try to counter misinformation and interference from hostile nations with blunt tools. Additionally, but without making any definitive conclusions, there is some indication that legislation, such as the NetzDG, aimed at strengthening citizens and granting them certain rights, has the unintended effect of encouraging social media platforms to delete a larger fraction of legal comments. This is a preview into the potential impact of the EU’s DSA now in force on freedom of expression.
The report is far kinder in its observations than it probably should be. It says multiple EU governments “understand” that content moderation is a “delicate balance.” That rarely seems to be the case. This report makes it clear that content moderation at scale is impossible. But when companies point this out, regulators tend to view these assertions as flimsy excuses and insist this means nothing more than tech companies just aren’t trying hard enough to meet the (impossible) demands of dozens of laws and hundreds of competing interests.
The takeaway from this report should be abundantly clear. But somehow adherence to the law of unintended consequences is still considered to be a constant flouting of the Unicorns Do Exist laws passed by governments that firmly believe that any decree they’ve issued must be possible to comply with. Otherwise they, in their infinite wisdom, wouldn’t have written it in the first place.
Filed Under: censorship, content removal, europe, france, free speech, germany, internet, netzdg, regulation, unintended consequences
Comments on “European Content Removal Laws Are Scrubbing The Internet Of Completely Legal Content”
Until the EU “says” otherwise, always assume that they fucking intended the removal of these things.
Oh, and unicorns do exist. They’re called rhinoceroses.
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I was told there was a unicorn lair in NK, was that a lie?
Oh, also The NK leader got a perfect score in golf, a hole in one on all eighteen holes.
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Do you knows the difference between a rhino and a zippo?
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One is really really heavy. The other is a little lighter
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One will gore you if you don’t respect its authoritah, scum.
The other is still more useful than your inane attempts to harass.
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I am glad you consider this harassment.
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Knock knock
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Narwhals, actually.
The only thing rarer than a unicorn is a competent politician…
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Competent politicians who don’t care about the people are… depressingly more common than you think.
You’re thinking about competent politicians that truly care about their constituents.
You can’t call yourself “non-partisan” when you go to bat for asshat transphobes like J.K. Rowling and pretend like Rowling’s side has an actual point, which they don’t.
The “full range of views on gender” is a cop-out phrase. It’s meant to paint the side that seeks the elimination of trans people as just another viewpoint that needs to be given legitimacy and debate.
And then there’s this piece about how Florida’s anti-DEI rules were ruled unconstitutional. Nobody in their right mind would call Florida’s rules “well-intentioned”, but Jacob does just that.
Reading through more of their work, it’s of the same “political correctness run amok” right-wing drivel that most think-tanks about speech, like The FIRE, espouse and use to get money.
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You da real MVP.
Unintended consequences… or are they?
Pretty sure the consequences are intended, but it’s not explicitly stated for PR reasons. It’s been happening for this long, and there tend not to be laws passed afterwards to “fix” the issues, so that implies it was the purpose of the initial legislation all along. It is concerning that these laws are becoming more and more globally pervasive though. It was only what? 10, 15 years ago that people laughed at these attempts and said “okay, we’ll just geographically block your country, have fun”. Now that’s not even considered enough.
Doesn’t help that encryption is also under attack.
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Encryption is math.
Strangest thing in the world
Freedom of speech.
There are So many things people DONT want to hear/see. that they Hide it in the DARK corner.
They are Afraid that THEIR, interesting SIDE will show up and be seen.(dont ask about that person that ended up Hung in a jail cell)(before he could give a list of friends)
This is like finding out that a Major person has been using illicit drugs to keep themselves going while in a Major political position, while being Fairly OLD(his name starts with a T).
Having a freely OPEN conversation is only allowed In Private, with Friends of the same Ilk. Other wise its like a Atheist hiding in the priesthood.
Why cant we all LEARN to understand WE ARE ANIMALS. And we act like them.
Stopping giving them "unintended"
The foreseeable outcome of an intentional action is not by any reasonable metric “unintended.” It is at best “preemptively regretted.”
That thing they were warned about happening, is happening!
Its amazing, we’ve never ever seen tech people explain how this is a really stupid idea, they make the idea law, it bites them in the ass.
Humans, how the fuck are you still alive?
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Instead of whining about the EU trying to protect vulnerable and marginalized communities, why doesn’t TD provides some actually useful content for once and explain various strategies for malicious compliance that the far-right can use to avoid being censored??
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shut up troll account
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Why don’t you write up that article on your super cool blog bro?
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Here’s one: Don’t deliberately misgender trans people. Simples! [Meerkat emoji.]
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There’s no such thing as a “trans” person. They’re just males or females who’re mentally ill.
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So why hasn’t anyone reasonable person sought treatment for them then?
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Even assuming the second statement was true (it’s not, and you clearly don’t know what is or isn’t a mental illness), that wouldn’t mean they aren’t a trans person.
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Because that’s not what Techdirt does. This isn’t a How-To website.
Nonsense
Utter nonsense. There is no explanation at all why comments are supposedly deleted. And we have enough free speech here in Germany, thank you very much.
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Section 230 libel trap:
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…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
Re: What?
Why have you mentioned section 230?
All the people involved in your scenario are 3rd parties to the site hosting the libel. Libel can spread just as easily from a social situation.
And you thought you were being so clever too….
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That would only work if the first step included the person you hired getting themselves employed to work for the website in question, dipwad.
Unless I missed it, the article doesn’t really explain how this all relates to potential government ruling. For one, glosses over important aspects like the problematique of how NetDZG relies on a combination of user reporting and ‘nuke it to be sure’ thinking (which has lead to legal content, like Twitch streamers being blocked in the country because of a total lack of oversight). In the context of Sweden, websites like Flashback, which is openly full of what the report categorises as ‘legal hat speech’ operates freely in the country. I’m not very knowledgeable about France, so I can’t comment at length – but haven’t they been known to be pretty iffy on free speech for a while?
It also feels dubious to use Facebook and Youtube because Meta and Google are known to be overzealous when it comes to moderating et al. The problem of them doing ‘better safe than sorry’ moderating is a global problem that isn’t neccesarily exclusive to the EU, and never has been. An important question I might have missed that the report has to acknowledge is what’s government demand, and what’s ToS. As an example, Youtube recently instated new policies about content featuring firearms that’s legal wherein Youtube operates, but it’s clear this is a ToS thing, not any ruling government stepping in.
I’m also not sure you can really say anything about the EU at large using only three countries. It’s a bit like only studying Texas and saying that’s all of the US. The DSA is Absolutely a political bludgeon, as has been made clear by things like the recent accosting of Pornhub and other sites beyond the claimed scope of the law, but the report doesn’t really say anything about this. It just confirms that Youtube and Facebook remove content they don’t really need or maybe ‘should’ remove, but likely do because of ToS.
I am OK with this
Speech needs to be regulated. It cannot be free. Fully Free speech is honestly proven to be too dangerous, time and time again.
A little collateral damage in the process of this? Is expected, and honestly acceptable. Most of the collateral damage is borderline content anyway.
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Agreed. My preference would be to see anti-Semites, communists and queers [redundant, I know] ejected from the public square first.
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