EU to tech companies: You're going to have to start taking responsibility for hate speech

In a move that would mark a major turning point for how governments regulate what is posted on online, European Union ministers have voted to establish a universal set of content rules companies like Facebook would be forced to follow.

The vote, which came on Tuesday, is not the final step; EU Parliament still has to give its final okay for the proposal to become law. But it's a major step towards putting serious new regulations that companies will need to address.

If passed, the rules would be the broadest content regulations yet put on tech platforms. Companies like Facebook and Google struggle to police the massive platforms they have built. A recent leak of Facebook documents provided a look at just how difficult it is for the social network to police its nearly two billion users. They're not alone in that challenge.

The ruling was part of an update to the EU's "Audiovisual Media Services Directive," issued a year ago, that tackled the issue of hate speech online as well as sought to protect children from offensive content online. It also required investment in European-made content distributed online.

In a press release, Vice-President for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip said:

"It is essential to have one common set of audiovisual rules across the EU and avoid the complication of different national laws. We need to take into account new ways of watching videos, and find the right balance to encourage innovative services, promote European films, protect children and tackle hate speech in a better way."

Individual countries have been exploring similar paths, most notably Germany, which recently passed a bill that made companies like Twitter and Facebook susceptible to fines of up to $53 million if hate speech was not scrubbed from the site within 24 hours of being flagged.

As we reported noted in December, there's a wider context to this approach going on in Germany, where hate speech laws were originally conceived in 1949 in an effort to curb any incitement that would lead to the type of fascism and atrocities borne out of World War II. 

The ongoing issue has also been lingering for some time in France

Not helping matters: Facebook is already in hot water with the EU, having been ordered just last week to pay fines in France and the Netherlands for violating data privacy laws.

There's no timeline for the parliamentary vote on the proposal yet but Ansip said it would happen "in the coming weeks."