Google, Facebook, Twitter face EU fines over extremist posts

ISIS fighter Image copyright Reuters Image caption Draft EU regulation is being planned to force social media to act more swiftly over terror content

Google, Facebook and Twitter must remove extremist content within an hour or face hefty fines, the European Commission’s president has said.

In his annual State of the Union address to the European Parliament, Jean-Claude Juncker said an hour was a “decisive time window”.

Net firms had been given three months in March to show they were acting faster to take down radical posts.

But EU regulators said too little was being done.

If authorities flag content that incites and advocates extremism, the content must be removed from the web within an hour, the proposal from the EU’s lead civil servant state. Net firms that fail to comply would face fines of up to four percent of their annual global turnover.

The proposal will need backing from the countries that make up the EU as well as the European Parliament and internet platforms will be required to develop new tools to police content.

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