EU may soon order Facebook to police posts for offensive content globally

Facebook Inc. may be ordered to remove offensive content posted by users in the European Union and then also hunt for similar posts anywhere in the world, an adviser to the bloc’s top court said.
 

Since the EU’s law for digital services and electronic commerce “does not regulate the territorial scope of an obligation to remove information disseminated via a social network platform, it does not preclude a host provider from being ordered to remove such information worldwide,” Advocate General Maciej Szpunar of the EU Court of Justice said in a non-binding opinion on Tuesday.
 

The ruling by the EU court, expected in a few months, will help clarify to what extent social media companies such as Facebook must police posts by billions of users worldwide. The Luxembourg-based court follows the advice of its advocates general in a majority of cases.
 

The underlying dispute concerns Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, a former Green member of the European Parliament from Austria, who was the subject of a number of offensive posts on a Facebook user’s account. She sought an order against the company to bloc any further publications of pictures of her if the text alongside them included similarly offensive content.