The US and EU part ways in regulating user content on social media

(June 9): US President Donald Trump’s attack on Twitter Inc. has highlighted how the European Union and the US are taking radically different approaches to overhaul how social media platforms should treat user content.

As both sides of the Atlantic move to update longstanding legal protections for internet platforms, Europe’s goal is obliging tech companies to cut back on hate speech and disinformation. In the US, Trump is seeking to strip legal protections if platforms engage in potential censorship or in any political conduct.

The US and EU rules, which protect social media companies and other platforms from liability for what users post on their sites, were designed more than 20 years ago to promote growth in the then-nascent internet sector and have since underpinned how the web works today.

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