Poland to study a new law to ban social media arbitrary blocking up to 360 million yuan fine

The right-wing government of Poland, a European ally of Trump, said on the 15th that it is studying an anti-censorship law to limit the power of Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies to delete content or block accounts, and that social media will be fined heavily if they block accounts that comply with Polish law because they disagree with users’ comments.

Poland’s ruling Legal Justice Party (PiS) believes that big tech companies censoring opinions that differ from their own liberal worldview are taking control of public debate to a dangerous degree; Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said at a press conference on the draft anti-censorship law that “The new law does not exclude the possibility of deleting posts or blocking accounts, but will prevent technology companies from “blocking personal statements or… Delete user accounts if they do not agree with them”.

Under the law, Congress will appoint five members to a “Commission on Freedom of Expression” to review such cases for a six-year term. Social media companies that delete posts and block accounts that do not violate Polish law would be fined up to 50 million Polish dollars (about NT$360 million).

The bill would require “global players” to respect Polish law, Jobro said, adding that “social media today decide for themselves what content they want to censor.

Poland had been planning the new law before the U.S. congressional riots, but recently Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki posted on Facebook that “algorithms or corporate giants should not decide what views are right or wrong,” and indirectly compared the removal of accounts from social media to the experience of Poland during the communist era, stressing that he “cannot agree to censorship of speech.

“The Legal Justice Party is a right-wing populist party with the same ideology as Trump on many issues, and the government led by the party has always valued its relationship with Trump, but the Legal Justice Party has been criticized in recent years for trying to clamp down on freedom of expression.