Poland summoned internet companies including Google and Meta to the Digital Affairs Ministry on Friday and demanded they do more to limit the spread of violent content after a series of school stabbings.
Three attacks in four days triggered a wave of online threats. Thousands of police officers were sent to schools this week as pupils and teachers feared for their safety. Warsaw says the glorification of violence in parts of the internet, including groups devoted to Nazi ideology or idolising serial killers, is damaging children, and it has urged social media firms to stop content that encourages or threatens violence.
Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski told a press conference that every Polish citizen expects that no one should incite others to commit suicide, that there should be no content endorsing or encouraging criminal threats, and that users should not be exposed to acts of murder, physical harm or mutilation.
Gawkowski said that between 7 and 12 October Poland flagged 89 cases of illegal content related to the attacks, and that companies failed to act in two-thirds of them. Representatives of Google, Meta, TikTok, Discord and Telegram attended. Elon Musk’s X was invited but did not attend. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The government is fast-tracking legislation to make damaging content easier and quicker to remove.
The latest stabbing was on Saturday, when three people were injured at a TEB Edukacja post-secondary school on Minska Street in Warsaw. On 8 October in Leszczydol-Nowiny, northeast of the capital, a 15-year-old former pupil wearing a helmet-mounted camera killed a school caretaker and wounded two teachers. A day earlier, a 19-year-old injured 10 people, including himself, at a school in Ostroleka.