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EU Tells Internet Giants To Remove Bad Content Inside An Hour

A major factor that social media and internet companies have had to deal with in recent years is hateful or illegal content people posted on their sites. It has gotten to the point that many companies have to specifically hire teams of thousands to monitor the content posted on their to ensure it falls within not just their own guidelines, but law in general.

In a report via Computing, however, it seems that the EU is losing patience at the slow and ineffective rate in which these companies are dealing with it. As such, the EU has warned all companies that failure to remove illegal or terrorist based content within an hour could result in major fines being imposed.

Self-Monitoring Isn’t Working

The EU commission feels that these websites are simply not making enough of an effort to monitor their content. As such, they’re going to start hitting them where it hurts. In truth, given how they are all largely failing to deal with this well, it’s a move that needed to be made. Unless, of course, you think that they are doing a good job here. Personally, I don’t think so!

It might sound strict, but I think I agree that it needs to happen. Social Media is simply not regulating itself!

Lacklustre Response

Back in March, the EU gave these major companies 3 months to submit to them their processes. Specifically for dealing with such posts and how they plan to move forward to improve it. Put simply, the response wasn’t encouraging.

At present, the EU has yet to elaborate on how large the fines will be. It does, however, seem clear that they gave them a chance to solve the problem and have finally lost patience. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens.

What do you think? Do social media companies do enough? Will this move incentivise them to take it seriously? In addition, is 1 hour a fair time frame? – Let us know in the comments!