What does de-conflicting mean in EU content moderation?

Coordinating removal requests so that taking down content does not disrupt ongoing law-enforcement work, e.g. blocking a suspect's account in one member state could compromise a counter-terrorism operation running in another.

More referrals and removal orders are not automatically better for security. Deleting the posts of someone who is under investigation can tip them off or destroy the evidence investigators are watching. The EU therefore builds public-private structures for exchanging and processing removal requests (trusted flaggers, standardised channels for requests). The open question is where platforms' private decisions to ban content overlap with the actual enforcement of the law, for example when platforms overblock out of fear of liability or use private algorithmic moderation.

Go deeper:

• Bellanova & de Goede (2022): Co-Producing Security — discusses referrals, removal orders and de-conflicting in the EU.