Western Europe’s struggle with free speech and with the tech sector is set to dramatically ramp up. Until recently, speech regulation has been a national matter, leading to vastly different tolerance levels in different countries (with laws stricter in Germany than in, say, Poland). New EU laws are changing that, and they could prove to have an intensely chilling effect on open political debate by rewarding self-censorship with algorithmic prominence.
In October of last year, the EU rolled out the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising regulation, introducing an onerous regulatory burden on political advertising that included requiring explicit user consent to process personal data for targeting such ads, along with bans on profiling based on inferred political views (or other special categories). Platforms found in violation could be fined up to 6 percent of their worldwide revenue. For Meta, to take one example, this would mean a $12 billion fine.
Comments