Why Could There Be Issues for Meta in the EU?
The changes have already caused concern. Former Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who is co-chair of Meta’s independent oversight board, told the BBC that she was worried that there could be a spike in hate speech, especially towards people in the LGBTQ+ communities. “We are seeing many instances where hate speech can lead to real-life harm, so we will be watching that space very carefully,” she said.
However, she will not be alone in scrutinizing the content. A pre-emptive war of words has already kicked off between Zuckerberg and EU authorities. In an interview with Joe Rogan, the Meta CEO rallied against the EU fines his company has had to pay in antitrust rulings. He said: “I think it’s a strategic advantage for the US that we have a lot of the strongest companies in the world, and I think it should be part of the US strategy going forward to defend that.”
As reported by Reuters, Zuckerberg went as far as the say that EU rules were choking innovation. “Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there,” he said. But the European Commission hit straight back and said: “We absolutely refute any claims of censorship.” It also said that it did not prescribe any specific form of moderation for social media platforms but “…whatever model a platform chooses needs to be effective.”
So while Zuckerberg might now have the favor of the US president and approval for his hands-off model, other countries have a very different view of what moderation should look like.
