EU states given right to police Facebook worldwide

National courts in EU states can order Facebook to delete content “worldwide”, Europe’s top tribunal has ruled, in what the US social media giant called an attack on free speech.

If content was deemed “illegal” by a national court, then Facebook could be ordered to “remove information covered by the injunction or to block access to that information worldwide”, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in Luxembourg on Thursday (3 October).

That meant, for instance, that if a court in Austria ruled that a news article about a politician was slanderous, then it could force the US giant to “remove” or “block” it not just in all the 28 EU member states but for all of its more than 2bn users world wide.