Polish government’s proposal for a new law on “protecting free speech of social media users” introduces data retention, a new, questionable definition of “unlawful content”, and an oversight body (Free Speech Council) that is likely to be politically compromised. In this context, “Surveillance and Censorship Act” would be a more accurate name.

A case study examined by Panoptykon Foundation and showcased by the Financial Times, demonstrates how Facebook uses algorithms to deliver personalised ads that may exploit users’ mental vulnerabilities. The experiment shows that users are unable to get rid of disturbing content: disabling sensitive interests in ad settings limits targeting options for advertisers, but does not affect Facebook’s own profiling and ad delivery practices. While much has been written about the disinformation and risks to democracy generated by social media’s data-hungry algorithms, the threat to people’s mental health has not yet received enough attention.

On 9 and 10 November 2010 the representatives of the EDRi-member Panoptykon Foundation met with the representatives of the European Commission in order to discuss the evaluation of the Data Retention Directive (DRD) and the rationale behind the regime of blanket data retention