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European Content Removal Laws Scrub the Internet of Legal Content

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 St…

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. 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. 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.

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