Social media allowed us to connect with one another like never before. But it came with a price – it handed a megaphone to everyone, including terrorists, child abusers and hate groups. EU institutions recently reached agreement on the Digital Services Act (DSA), which aims to “make sure that what is illegal offline is dealt with as illegal online”.
The UK government also has an online safety bill in the works, to step up requirements for digital platforms to take down illegal material.
The scale at which large social media platforms operate – they can have billions of users from across the world – presents a major challenge in policing illegal content. What is illegal in one country might be legal and protected expression in another. For example, rules around criticising government or members of a royal family.
