Poland vs Big Tech: New laws to put a stop to Big tech censorship

Only a week ago, it was the EU Commission taking on the big tech companies with its Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Now Poland is joining the fight against the Big Tech. The offenders who censor their users by removing posts that are not against the law will have to face fines up to 2.2 million euros. Polish courts will be deciding what goes against the law:

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro emphasized that “a social media user must have the feeling that their rights are protected. There cannot be censorship of expression. Freedom of speech and debate is the essence of democracy.”

An increasing number of posts are being removed by the social media companies and users are being met with bans or even account deletions. Usually, at that point, these users are at the mercy of social media platforms and have limited options.

While freedom of speech and expression are vital in democracies, social media is dominated by companies which can introduce their own guidelines. At the same time, these companies must respect the laws of the countries in which they operate.

Deputy justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta, who is overseeing the work on the laws, declared that the time has come for Poland to have regulations which protect against abuses from giant internet corporations, according to Polish news outlet Benchmark.pl.

He added that the new regulations will allow Poland to punish social media companies for violating the rights of users, which will be backed by the full power of the Polish judiciary. If companies are found to be violating a users' rights and refuse to obey a court's ruling, they could be fined up to €2.2 million.

In the case of a conflict between a social media site and the user, the new law dictates that a Polish court will decide whether a law had actually been broken which would have justified censorship.

Countries such as Germany and France have already enacted laws that impose multi-million dollar penalties on social networks that violate country's laws, and it looks like more and more European countries are willing to follow their example.