this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
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26
EU’s Top Court Just Made It Literally Impossible To Run A User-Generated Content Platform Legally (www.techdirt.com)
submitted 21 hours ago by General_Effort@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] tal@lemmy.today 7 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Note that the issue only affects websites in the EU legal jurisdiction. From the US legal standpoint, that means doing business in the EU. The body text has the qualification, but the headline does not.

The Court of Justice of the EU—likely without realizing it—just completely shit the bed and made it effectively impossible to run any website in the entirety of the EU that hosts user-generated content.

"in the entirety of the EU"

That's kinda clickbaity. This isn't going to apply to, say, lemmy.today.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

You know how 4chan is doing business in the UK? In the same way, lemmy.today is doing business in the EU.

This ruling is not likely to have immediate consequences for the fediverse, since the GDPR is not enforced much.

I don't think it is actually impossible, as the headline claims. Platforms that have already been on the receiving of enforcement are probably fine, eg Facebook.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

4chan's position is that they aren't doing business in the UK, which is why they're disregarding the UK regulator's fines. The UK regulator might be able to block them in the UK if the UK rolls out a Great Firewall of the UK, say, a la China, but probably not get the US to enforce rulings against them. And, I'd add, such a Great British Firewall is going to have limited impact unless the Brits also ban VPNs in the UK that don't also do such blocking internal to the VPN and additionally block external VPNs, a la Russia.

In the same way, lemmy.today is doing business in the EU.

Very unlikely, in the eyes of the US court system. They have no EU physical presence, and aren't advertising targeting EU people.

Facebook

Yeah, now they might be affected, but they're in the EU.

EDIT: For context, last year, this happened:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-fines-google-20-decillion-world-gdp-youtube-kremlin-war-ukraine-rcna178172

Russia fines Google more than the world's entire GDP

Russian courts can hand down whatever rulings they want, but they don't really have an effect elsewhere unless other legal systems view them as having jurisdiction.

Iran has the death penalty for blasphemy. But the US isn't going to enforce rulings on blasphemy unless it views Iran as having jurisdiction over the person posting said content.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

Very unlikely, in the eyes of the US court system. They have no EU physical presence, and aren’t advertising targeting EU people.

That's exactly the thing. US courts don't care about foreign laws in the first place. They don't care about a EU presence at all.

Nevertheless, the EU demands that any websites, internet services, ... that are offered to EU users follow EU laws like GDPR. If it's in a language not spoken in the EU, then it's probably fine. If lemmy.today declared that it was specifically for Oregonians, that would likely be fine, too. But anything in English that is offered globally, is a potential target.

That should not be taken lightly. If the 4chan people travelled to UK, they would probably be arrested. They will have to watch out when they travel abroad if the country might assist the UK and arrest and arrest them. If they ever acquire property abroad, that might be seized.

Fedi-servers in the EU certainly have to follow these regulations.

[–] xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 6 points 21 hours ago

Fucking technologically illiterate nincompoops.