The Nordic justice ministers are meeting today outside Uppsala. Representatives from Meta, Google, Snapchat, and Tiktok have also been invited.
The purpose is to see what can be done to stop gangs' recruitment of young people via digital media platforms within the framework of current laws. Karlsten does not believe that anything concrete will come out of the meeting.
It's a political show, he says.
"Don't care"
According to Karlsten, the global companies don't care much about what the Nordic ministers think.
But they care about their platforms, brands, and businesses.
According to Karlsten, it's not Facebook groups or Tiktok accounts that are primarily the problem when gangs recruit young people via social media.
Sure, there's a kind of grooming going on. But it's not criminal to show off a certain lifestyle on social media. The problem is that they then link to encrypted apps and different Telegram groups, and they change all the time.
The authorities cannot force companies to refrain from offering encrypted services. That would require legislative changes.
The principles at stake are whether we should allow secret conversations between citizens or not, says Karlsten.
Effective channels
According to EU law, platforms have no strict liability for what users upload or an obligation to actively search for illegal material. However, they have an obligation to act if they receive a notification from law enforcement about criminal material.
Maybe they're looking for more effective channels for such removal when they find something criminal, says lawyer Daniel Westman, specialized in media law, about today's meeting.
Platforms can remove material that violates user terms or is illegal, but then they must motivate their decision and give the user an opportunity to have the matter reviewed.
Westman notes that it can be difficult for platforms themselves to find accounts or posts that are criminal without information from the police, or to assess on their own what is illegal.
So it builds on the police and prosecutors having that knowledge and saying so.
Westman can also imagine that the police want to get more information from platforms about users of different accounts.
There, it's pretty clear what the legislation sets as limits. There, the platforms don't have much room to maneuver, he says.
