The European Union is currently drafting legislation by which social media giants will have only one hour to remove content inciting to violence and terrorist, the Financial Times reported Monday.
Removal of such content in an hour is currently voluntary, but according to the report, the EU plans to impose the one-hour deadline next month.
Once this directive is in place, social media giants such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter would have to remove content inciting to violence and terrorist within an hour of it being flagged as illegal by law enforcement bodies.
EU Commissioner for Security Julian King said the new regulation would apply to websites of all sizes, saying the new directives aimed to clarify what up until now has been a vague issue.
"All this leads to such content continuing to proliferate across the internet, reappearing once deleted and spreading from platform to platform," he said.
He noted that the European Commission has decided to abandon a voluntary approach to get social media platforms to remove terror-related videos, posts and audio clips from their websites as it had "not seen enough progress" on the issue.
Brussels seeks to "take stronger action in order to better protect our citizens. We cannot afford to relax or become complacent in the face of such a shadowy and destructive phenomenon," King said.
The proposed regulation would be the first time that the EU has explicitly targeted how social media giants handle extreme content of this nature.
"The difference in size and resources means platforms have differing capabilities to act against terrorist content and their policies for doing so are not always transparent. All this leads to such content continuing to proliferate across the internet, reappearing once deleted and spreading from platform to platform," King told the Financial Times.
The draft regulation still has to be approved by the European Parliament and a majority of EU member states to be enacted, he said.
