Vestager: Legal Action Against Facebook Could Be Endless, Regulation Needed

EU’s Margrethe Vestager told Deutsche Welle that breaking up Facebook could take “years,” and that leaders should act quickly before the platform does any more damage.

Asked if Facebook was too large and powerful to even attempt to force changes from the outside, Vestager said “not for our democracy.”

She said democracies standing together can make real changes to how Facebook runs its platforms, and said regulations needed to be tightened up when dealing with companies that could wield “immense influence” over democracy, and over people’s mental health.

“If we stand together, then we can make real changes,” Vestager said. “And just to make Facebook assess the risk that they could pose to young people’s mental health and to have, you know, external people looking into that assessment to see if things have been corrected, that would be an important step forward.”

“We also need to regulate much tighter if we are dealing with someone who can have an immense influence both on mental health, but also how our democracy develops,” she added, explaining that the EU Commission had prepared legislation that balances the need to preserve freedom of speech but to get rid of things that “are illegal offline” such as incitement to violence.