The European Union announced today that it has approved a law to require technology platforms to flag and take down terrorist-related within one hour or face hefty fines.

“The new regulation will target content such as texts, images, sound recordings or videos, including live transmissions, that incite, solicit or contribute to terrorist offenses, provide instructions for such offenses or solicit people to participate in a terrorist group,” the EU said in a press release.

It won’t happen immediately, since the law first must be written into the EU’s official journal. It will then be applied 12 months after the entry, and subsequently, each member will have to adopt it.

The EU explained that this won’t affect content related to education, journalism, art, research or any other content related to raising awareness of terrorism. If the content doesn’t fit into those categories and remains online for longer than one hour, tech companies could be hit by a fine of up to 4% of their global annual revenue.

“Terrorists recruit, share propaganda, and coordinate attacks on the internet,” said Patryk Jaki, an EU legislator and rapporteur on the legislation. “Today we have established effective mechanisms allowing member states to remove terrorist content within a maximum of one hour all around the European Union.” He also said he believes the law “balances security and freedom of speech and expression on the internet.”

Rights activists disagree. Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders both said such a law could have a negative effect on free speech. Tech companies will not be forced to apply more filters or monitor their platforms differently, but activists have said that with such large fines at stake, they won’t have any choice but to do that.

Others have pointed out that what defines terrorist content can be a gray area. The human rights watchdog Civil Liberties Union for Europe, along with more than 60 human rights and journalist organizations, signed a letter to the EU asking for the law to be scrapped.

“Most worrying, any EU country can issue a removal order of online content hosted anywhere in the EU within the hour, without any checks or judicial review,” said the organization. “This could open the way for authoritarian regimes, like those in Poland and Hungary, to silence their critics abroad by issuing removal orders beyond their borders, effectively extending their jurisdiction beyond their borders.”

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