(Headline USA) Elite world leaders at the World Economic Forum predicted the U.S. will soon implement “illegal hate speech laws” to crack down on “disinformation.”
Vera Jourova, the vice president for “values and transparency” for the European Union, said during a Tuesday panel at the Davos Summit that the U.S. is not far behind other Western nations in its plans to crack down on “hate speech.”
“What qualifies as hate speech, as illegal hate speech, which you will have soon also in the U.S.,” she said, directing her comments to fellow panelist Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. “I think that we have a strong reason why we have this in the criminal law, we need the platforms to simply work with the language and to identify such cases.”
At one point, Moulton agreed that Europe is “way ahead of us” on data regulation, though he claimed he believes “very strongly in free speech.”
“There is a healthy concern in the United States that you might be going a little too far,” he said to Jourova.
Another panelist, New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, claimed disinformation is an “existential” threat to society.
Brian Stelter, the failed CNN host who was ousted from the network last year, moderated the panel.
The WEF recently called for a “Global Framework to Regulate Harm Online.”
The EU’s European Commission plans to roll out its own form of this policy, called the “Code of Practice on Disinformation,” later this month. The policy sets up “commitments for participating platforms and industry leaders to counter online disinformation,” according to reports. Twitter, Google, Microsoft and TikTok have already signed onto the plan.
