Justice Minister Gideon Sa'ar on Thursday announced plans to introduce legislation to halt online incitement to the Knesset.
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Should Sa'ar's legislative initiative become law, district courts in Israel would be tasked with ruling on whether Google, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter are obligated to remove content the publication of which constitutes a criminal offense and poses a genuine threat to the state, the public, or an individual's security. The publisher and owner of the content in question, the operator of the website where it was published, as well as representatives of the service provider, would be summoned for discussions on requests to remove such content.
According to the bill's explanatory notes, government policies have failed to keep up with technological advances when it comes to contending with online threats.
"Incitement on social media networks is directly related to harm to public security. Stopping [a similar] 2017 government bill was a whim that expressed the abandonment of the public and its security. I have therefore decided to renew this vital legislative initiative," Sa'ar said.
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