Social media companies to be held liable for financial scams under new EU rules

The European Union passed a new law Thursday morning that will make social media platforms like Meta and TikTok liable for financial fraud — a major boost to the bloc’s effort to rein in Big Tech.

After hours of late-night negotiations, EU lawmakers approved the measure, adding another layer of regulatory pressure on companies that have spent years lobbying Washington to counter the EU’s aggressive antitrust and content-restraint agenda. The law is based on the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which curb the spread of illegal content and prevent tech giants like Google, Amazon and Meta from leveraging their dominance to expand on the internet.

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Violating any law could lead to massive fines, which the tech sector – and US President Donald Trump – have repeatedly pushed back against. Trump has accused the EU of “discriminating” against American companies, and described the implementation of the bloc as an attack on American innovation.

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Much of the final round of deliberations focused on who was to blame when these scandals occurred. Several MEPs argued that Big Tech and banks share equal responsibility, as the platforms host the scams and the banks process the funds. However, European governments pushed back, arguing that banks should only be held accountable if their own safeguards fail.

The result is a compromise: Banks will reimburse victims when a scammer impersonates a bank or when a financial transaction takes place without the customer’s consent, according to the EU release.

The new fraud-liability rules come as social media platforms have become a primary target of investment scams, impersonation schemes and all kinds of questionable advertising. Under the law, platforms now have to compensate banks if a user is defrauded, and it is clear that the company has failed to address reported scams.

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social media government



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