Welcome to the Tech Against Terrorism Europe (TATE) Guide on the European regulation on terrorist content online (TCO)!
This guide offers advice for hosting service providers (HSPs) to comply with this EU regulation and gives an overview of their obligations and opportunities to counter the terrorist threat.
According to TCO regulation, HSPs have to take active steps in order to prevent abuse or exploitation of their platforms by terrorist actors. This includes a swift removal of content within one hour after they have been notified about terrorist content on their platforms. In order to comply, several key obligations and mechanisms have to be met and implemented.
This guide deals with the obligations placed on hosting service providers (HSPs) by the European Regulation on Terrorist Content Online (TCO) adopted in April 2021. It addresses what HSPs need to consider to counter the dissemination of terrorist content online and gives practical advice on how to implement various measures for doing so.
The guide focuses firstly on the minimum requirements HSPs must satisfy to comply with the TCO Regulation. Secondly, it provides tips and practical advice on relevant (pro-)active measures HSPs should adopt to successfully navigate the complexities of regulatory enforcement (i.e. what to do when a removal order appears in your mailbox) and to prepare HSPs to counter terrorist exploitation of their platforms.
The guide is part of the Tech Against Terrorism Europe (TATE) project funded by the European Commission. TATE’s consortium consists of Dublin City University, Ghent University, JOS Project, LMU Munich, Saher Europe, Swansea University, and Tech Against Terrorism. TATE aims to create awareness of the EU TCO Regulation and to support small and micro tech companies to take measures in support of it. Together with other resources, TATE has created this guide to make the legal and practical expectations as tangible as possible for HSPs.
The guide is aimed at hosting service providers (HSPs) and their employees as well as at IT professionals who want to implement technical features for countering terrorist content in the platform architectures. It is intended to provide information about the minimum requirements that must be satisfied to comply with the EU’s TCO Regulation of 2021 (29 April).
We have created this guide and other TATE resources to support small and micro HSPs. We acknowledge that small and micro HSPs often have limited resources to tackle terrorist content on their platforms.
The European Regulation on Terrorist Content Online (TCO) came into effect in June 2022 and obliges HSPs to remove content or disable access to it within one hour of receiving a removal order from a competent authority.
HSPs have to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, like Europol, as well as other relevant authorities, in detecting and removing terrorist content that may be present on their platforms. To comply with the TCO Regulation, HSPs must also implement effective and proportionate measures to prevent terrorist content from being re-uploaded and face further obligations that you will learn about in this guide.
The TCO Regulation currently requires HSPs to:
- Draft appropriate Terms of Services (chapter 1),
- Take specific measures for identifying and removing terrorist content (chapter 2),
- Establish effective moderation mechanisms (chapter 3),
- Establish points of contact and legal representatives (chapter 4),
- Set up user notification and complaint mechanisms (chapter 5),
- Publish transparency reports (chapter 6).
We have structured the explanations and recommendations provided in this guide according to these six principal requirements. At the beginning of each chapter, you will find a short summary of the chapter’s contents and its main points. Afterwards, you will be provided with detailed information on what the TCO Regulation requires or urges HSPs to implement as well as further practical advice to defend your platform against terrorist (and other harmful) content.
The TCO Regulation affects hosting service providers, which includes any platform enabling users to distribute information to the public through the use of its services.
The TCO Regulation applies
The TCO Regulation places specific obligations on HSPs that are ‘exposed to terrorist content’. According to Art. 5.4, such exposure occurs when a HSP has been notified of and received two or more final removal orders in the previous 12 months from the Member State competent authority in which the HSP has its main establishment or its legal representative in the EU.