Petition

We call on you, as Members of the European Parliament, to vote against the adoption of the European Union’s proposal for a Regulation on addressing the dissemination of terrorist content online.

This proposal gives broad powers to censor online content to national authorities without judicial oversight. The requirements of the proposal incentivise companies to over-censor genuine content through the use of automated tools, without any guarantee of human oversight.

Why is this important?

In less than two weeks, our MEPs in the EU Parliament will vote on a new law that aims to stop online terrorist content. None of us want to see violent extremist content on the internet, but there are major flaws with the way this law is written.

If MEPs approve the new law as it stands, our national governments will gain broad new powers to demand the removal of online content within one hour. [3] And if the tech companies fail to meet this deadline, they’ll face massive fines.

To avoid these fines and protect their profits, tech companies will end up over-censoring genuine content that isn't terrorist at all! And this will only reinforce the monopolies of Facebook and Google. Because it’s their automated moderation tools that will have to be used by all internet actors. [4]

The good news is that all hope isn’t lost: the EU Parliament could still vote down this deal. But to get that to happen, we need to make sure our representatives know what’s at stake. That’s why we’re starting a massive petition drive right before the vote – so that MEPs see that Europeans care about digital rights.

References:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/eu-online-terrorism-regulation-bad-deal
https://edri.org/our-work/terrorist-content-online-is-this-the-end/
https://wikimediapolicy.medium.com/upside-down-should-all-content-be-deemed-terrorist-until-determined-otherwise-f0a4beaae4a4
The obligations put upon companies in the text are so strict that every actor on the internet will have to use the moderation tools developed by Facebook and Google.
https://www.laquadrature.net/en/terreg/

Image by Diliff [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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