How can a society course-correct without confronting dissent? The sphere of "acceptable" discourse seems to shrink by the day.
Putting on my cynical hat, I could imagine powerful interests using this opportunity to consolidate their power and silence their opposition under the guide of "prevention mis/dis/malinformation" - it's a slippery slope which is easy to abuse if not careful in our approach. This is what I meant by "so much for democracy". I very much hope I'm wrong :)
>Putting on my cynical hat, I could imagine powerful interests using this opportunity to consolidate their power and silence their opposition under the guide of "prevention mis/dis/malinformation"
A powerful monopoly can do the same thing, and you don’t get to vote on their board. Why is that any less dangerous?
Why do you think that the CCP built the great firewall, rather then threatening to throw anyone on earth who says anything that offends them, or who enables other to say things that offend them, into prison?
The EU will just prevent their own citizens from purchasing subscriptions and ads. If anyone's going to block the site in the EU it would be Twitter themselves.
A less politically charged framing would be: The EU would, quite rightly, prevent Twitter from operating as a business in their jurisdiction due to their refusal to conform to EU regulations.
That would then prevent Twitter from charging customers in those geographies (whether those customers are advertisers or users). And given the EU economy is one of the largest in the world, that could seriously impede Twitter's revenue potential.
>Elon Musk has said he's about context on tweets, so here's context for these shirts: They came from Twitter's Black employee resource group and were popularized by @jack, who wore a version around to conferences to support the group (and was sometimes ridiculed for it).
The disbanding of Twitter's Brussels office has sparked concerns whether Twitter will be able to comply with EU rules on online content (e.g. disinformation code).
Two remaining Brussels executives left last week after Musk asked staff to commit to a "hardcore working culture"; it's unclear whether they resigned or were fired.
The article quotes the EU's vice-president in charge of the disinformation code as saying she is "concerned" about Twitter's future ability to "detect and take action against disinformation and propaganda ... Especially in the context of Russian disinformation warfare, I expect Twitter to fully respect the EU law and honour its commitments. Twitter has been a very useful partner in the fight against disinformation and illegal hate speech and this must not change."
The article adds that advertisers are also worried.
No, absolute free speech has never been a blanket right in all of the EU states, why do you assume that? There are multiple laws against hate speech, against spreading of Nazi ideas, etc.
Do you have examples of when those laws have silenced a citizen from speaking their mind where it wouldn't cause damages to a minority or just other people in general? Because I'm fully onboard in not allowing Nazi-speech be spread around, it infects the mind of the fearful and tolerating it has been shown to not work.
> Yeah and it's at an all-time high exactly due to the tolerance of speech and politics having to tip-toe around the calls from right-wingers/libertarians that limiting this speech is an invasion in their rights.
More speech slipping through the government's fingers just means they need to tighten their grip more?
No, it needs to be brought into political discussion and a real analysis of how and why such speech has been spreading and tolerated. I believe that curtailing speech that is hateful is needed while I'm not equipped to define what's hateful speech but believe we have enough scholars who studied hate speech, paradox of tolerance, and the many other facets that pure absolute free speech can take that is detrimental to society to be able to debate in the appropriate forum what could deter those ideas from spreading through the mindless hateful folk.
I love how more and more I completely agree that this parody of Hacker News [1] approaches how discussions are done here. From my take where I believe that right-wingers and libertarians are forcing the tolerance of intolerants based purely on ideology I get replies saying that I'm both arguing for a censorship State to a TL;DR from a numbwit under a throwaway account stating that I'm calling for communism.
I know we don't have free speech. I just said that! It's nothing new.
The past 3 years have been rife with disinformation. Mask don't work, then they do, then they don't. The vaccine is 99% effective, then you need a booster, then you need a 2nd booster. If you get the vaccine you won't get Wuhan Pneumonia, then you do get it. The virus was definitely not made in a lab in Wuhan, then maybe it was, then maybe "we'll never know".
If you disagreed with the government line then you got censored by "private companies" collaborating with govt agents. If you gathered with others to disagree then the government would silence you with force. If you traveled more than 1km from your home the government would tax you 1500.
If the government had had enough security apparatus they would have done what we see in China. Locking people in Ikea, in an iPhone factory, in their homes.
Furthermore I noticed you jumped straight to that from "disinformation". I wonder if I should read anything into that. Better not.
"Do not do to others what you don't want be done to you" is a good starting point on which free speech should be allowed and which should not. You should not have freedom to curtail the freedoms of others.
There's a famous Austrian philosopher named Karl Popper, who saw the rise of the Nazis, how they abused the freedoms extended to them and what horrors that brought.
Shortly after the end of WW2, he came to this conclusion:
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
[...]
> We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
Personally, I agree with this logic. Uncurtailed freedom only works as long as people don't use it to curtail the freedoms of others and that sort of abuse has to be stopped in the interest of freedom.
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
Hard to describe posting awful garbage on twitter as "[forbidding] their followers to listen to rational argument" or answering those arguments "by the use of their fists or pistols". One might make the argument that it isn't "[meeting] us on the level of rational argument", but one could easily make the argument that all of twitter by it's very nature of tossing bumpersticker sized sound bites over the walls at each other isn't anything remotely approacing "rational argument".
And so you use force and violence on that person. What other groups are "guilty by association" that we should curtail their speech because some of their members have committed acts of violence in the name of their movement? Antifa? Communists? Environmentalists? BLM? Socialists? Anarchists? Union organizers? Can you confidently assert that you belong to no groups such that if the political winds changed you'd be comfortable allowing your opponents the authority to censor your group's speech if any members commit violence?
Thanks for the classic example of a pathos argument, this is something that both political parties excel at: take a single example of a tragedy and use it as an emotional hammer to stifle dissent.
Of course, we need not reason about or think about the atrocities that have resulted from government controlled media and speech - according to your point, we're supposed to infer that somehow maybe if we just controlled speech more this awful thing wouldn't have happened.
Nevermind that the shooter was apparently non-binary, suffered awful abuse, was bullied and severely disturbed... No the solution is to limit that pesky free speech. Then everything will be fine?
Oh, and also the link you posted doesn't in any way represent what you claim it did. Nothing in there celebrated the shooting, that link discusses "libs of TikTok" account criticizing an organization that promotes drag performing to children. Poor timing, sure... But not exactly the smoking gun excuse to limit freedom of expression that you suggest it is.
It's so funny to me to read this long comment with Popper quotes (from a book I read in the original German, no less) employed towards complete annihilation of the straw man that is "total free speech".
Nobody* wants incitements to actual crimes on twitter.
Nobody* wants "freedom" to post racial slurs on twitter. That shits get's even censored on "patriots.win" which is the successor of reddit/r/the_donald
People concerned about online censorship worry about these issues among other:
* conservative rappers getting banned for saying "okay dude" while lefty checkmarks can freely post violent fantasies about their political opponents.
* Alexander Berenson and probably others being banned on behalf of the US government
* people getting arrested in the UK because "anti-LGBTQ social media post 'caused anxiety'"
* people getting arrested for posts that are just political speech now in Germany, Austrialia, Sweden all over really
* people getting banned / demonetized on Youtube for not following the party line on COVID even if they discuss peer reviewed studies and official data
Let's not pretend the current free speech debate is about empowering racists to say the N-word more.
"Twitter has been a very useful partner in the fight against disinformation and illegal hate speech and this must not change."
Governments are supposed to do regulatory action and not partnerships. I rather have democratic laws (even with the minor power individual citizens has in EU), than governments officials being in control of content moderation at a public platform.
The quote is not from twitter but by Věra Jourová, the EU’s vice-president in charge of the disinformation code. "They" in this context is the EU commission.
Here in Sweden we have a long standing political guideline when it come to politicians and media/news/culture/free speech. Politician should keep a minimum arm-length distance so to not enter temptation of controlling those part of society.
Partnership in this context is also a bit weird. The EU commission does not have a police force nor do they enforce the law. The commission role is draft legislation, arbitrate in the legislative process, engage in trade negotiations, and draw up the budget of the European Union.
> Governments are supposed to do regulatory action and not partnerships.
This is a very American view of politics, and this view is certainly not shared by every human on Earth. Europeans voted for such governments, along with all the benefits and drawbacks.
Being able to choose governments that align with their ideals is democracy.
We got 21 votes in a 705 member parliament, but this article is about the European Commission and not the European Parliament. The commission is appointed from each member state, but those appointed are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. It operate as the cabinet government of the European union rather than elected representatives of each country.
Thus the relation to Europeans votes are a bit more disconnected with the commission compared to the parliament. It also the commission that draws most criticism. The biggest being transparency as as the commission is not held to the same democratic rules as parliament. A EU regulation by its nature must be transparent, while the operation of the commission often is not.
WP quote: "One assertion of democratic illegitimacy focuses on the role of the European Commission as a non elected institution being the only entity (with some few exceptions) initiating legislation."
> EU To Warn Twitter And Facebook To Stick To Rules
> The social media giants' EU operations are based in Ireland, and Brussels is worried that a wave of job losses will undermine their content moderation and data protection standards.
> But there are concerns in Brussels that Musk's libertarian free speech stance -- and the gutting of Twitter's staff -- will undermine efforts to stamp out propaganda, hate speech and harassment.
---
A) This Brussels office is not Twitter's only, or even main, presence in the EU. So this probably isn't a "fine I'll just leave" thing.
B) This comes in the middle of a spat about whether Twitter is actually allowed to stop censoring things. The FT article sounds like this was probably the office responsible for coordinating Twitter's censorship policies with government policy makers?
It's super fascinating to watch this unfold. The almost chaos-monkey approach of messing with everything here and there and watching how things fail and who complains. And then deciding whether or not it needs fixing. Observing how this the "online safety" system fails, reveals many details of how it used to work, details that were previously obscure. Apparently advertisers, ngos, and governments all seemed to have hotlines were they were able to control the moderation in real time.
The internet is essentially a worldwide network so having a company claim it only falls under U.S. jurisdiction even though it reaches users everywhere is still an unsolved enigma.
Most U.S. Big Tech companies have willingly set-up shop in Europe, but with increasingly acrimonious legislation putting them in the cross-hairs I wouldn't be surprised if someone like Musk tests if he can get away with merely operating from U.S. soil and ignoring EU legislation.
Should the CCP also have say in what content American companies are allowed to host? If not, then what part of your argument breaks by replacing "the EU" with "China"?
The EU believes it can regulate U.S. Big Tech even if they're not operating on EU soil.
The Cookie Banner is one example. Most U.S. websites detect European users and show the pop-up accordingly. IMHO a U.S. web-based newspaper or site shouldn't have to do this as long as all its servers are U.S.-based.
68 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadNot sure how that is supposed to be undemocratic.
Putting on my cynical hat, I could imagine powerful interests using this opportunity to consolidate their power and silence their opposition under the guide of "prevention mis/dis/malinformation" - it's a slippery slope which is easy to abuse if not careful in our approach. This is what I meant by "so much for democracy". I very much hope I'm wrong :)
A powerful monopoly can do the same thing, and you don’t get to vote on their board. Why is that any less dangerous?
Yikes... so much for democracy.
Given that twitter has a large presence in EU, leaving doesn't seem viable so they will probably pay the fine.
That would then prevent Twitter from charging customers in those geographies (whether those customers are advertisers or users). And given the EU economy is one of the largest in the world, that could seriously impede Twitter's revenue potential.
Taking a look at the actual data[2], hate speech has decreased.
1: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1595250835096621057
2: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1595630109116989440
>Elon Musk has said he's about context on tweets, so here's context for these shirts: They came from Twitter's Black employee resource group and were popularized by @jack, who wore a version around to conferences to support the group (and was sometimes ridiculed for it).
https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1595271296459292672
Two remaining Brussels executives left last week after Musk asked staff to commit to a "hardcore working culture"; it's unclear whether they resigned or were fired.
The article quotes the EU's vice-president in charge of the disinformation code as saying she is "concerned" about Twitter's future ability to "detect and take action against disinformation and propaganda ... Especially in the context of Russian disinformation warfare, I expect Twitter to fully respect the EU law and honour its commitments. Twitter has been a very useful partner in the fight against disinformation and illegal hate speech and this must not change."
The article adds that advertisers are also worried.
> local Twitter executives who had key positions to deal with government officials
> the EU’s vice-president in charge of the disinformation code
Imagine thinking these are good and the changes are bad. Never let anyone tell you we have free speech in europe.
Do you have examples of when those laws have silenced a citizen from speaking their mind where it wouldn't cause damages to a minority or just other people in general? Because I'm fully onboard in not allowing Nazi-speech be spread around, it infects the mind of the fearful and tolerating it has been shown to not work.
Don't shove your words into my mouth, it's disrespectful and lame...
TL;DR: an asshat using a throwaway is around to throw hot takes on Hacker News. Another shooting at 11, tune in.
More speech slipping through the government's fingers just means they need to tighten their grip more?
I love how more and more I completely agree that this parody of Hacker News [1] approaches how discussions are done here. From my take where I believe that right-wingers and libertarians are forcing the tolerance of intolerants based purely on ideology I get replies saying that I'm both arguing for a censorship State to a TL;DR from a numbwit under a throwaway account stating that I'm calling for communism.
It's truly mesmerising how shallow people can be.
[1] http://bradconte.com/files/misc/HackerNewsParodyThread/
The past 3 years have been rife with disinformation. Mask don't work, then they do, then they don't. The vaccine is 99% effective, then you need a booster, then you need a 2nd booster. If you get the vaccine you won't get Wuhan Pneumonia, then you do get it. The virus was definitely not made in a lab in Wuhan, then maybe it was, then maybe "we'll never know".
If you disagreed with the government line then you got censored by "private companies" collaborating with govt agents. If you gathered with others to disagree then the government would silence you with force. If you traveled more than 1km from your home the government would tax you 1500.
If the government had had enough security apparatus they would have done what we see in China. Locking people in Ikea, in an iPhone factory, in their homes.
Furthermore I noticed you jumped straight to that from "disinformation". I wonder if I should read anything into that. Better not.
Shortly after the end of WW2, he came to this conclusion:
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
[...]
> We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
Personally, I agree with this logic. Uncurtailed freedom only works as long as people don't use it to curtail the freedoms of others and that sort of abuse has to be stopped in the interest of freedom.
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
Hard to describe posting awful garbage on twitter as "[forbidding] their followers to listen to rational argument" or answering those arguments "by the use of their fists or pistols". One might make the argument that it isn't "[meeting] us on the level of rational argument", but one could easily make the argument that all of twitter by it's very nature of tossing bumpersticker sized sound bites over the walls at each other isn't anything remotely approacing "rational argument".
For example, reasonable people may view anyone who disagrees with same sex marriage as intolerant.
Those same reasonable people may also agree with your point above.
The result? Suppression of speech about a controversial political process, and the weakening of the democratic process.
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/11/21/libs-of-tiktok-colorad...
Speech isn't some high minded abstract thing, it has real life consequences and the kind of speech that gets people killed needs to be suppressed.
Of course, we need not reason about or think about the atrocities that have resulted from government controlled media and speech - according to your point, we're supposed to infer that somehow maybe if we just controlled speech more this awful thing wouldn't have happened.
Nevermind that the shooter was apparently non-binary, suffered awful abuse, was bullied and severely disturbed... No the solution is to limit that pesky free speech. Then everything will be fine?
Oh, and also the link you posted doesn't in any way represent what you claim it did. Nothing in there celebrated the shooting, that link discusses "libs of TikTok" account criticizing an organization that promotes drag performing to children. Poor timing, sure... But not exactly the smoking gun excuse to limit freedom of expression that you suggest it is.
Nobody* wants incitements to actual crimes on twitter.
Nobody* wants "freedom" to post racial slurs on twitter. That shits get's even censored on "patriots.win" which is the successor of reddit/r/the_donald
People concerned about online censorship worry about these issues among other:
* conservative rappers getting banned for saying "okay dude" while lefty checkmarks can freely post violent fantasies about their political opponents.
* Alexander Berenson and probably others being banned on behalf of the US government
https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-becomes-a-tool-of-gover...
* people getting arrested in the UK because "anti-LGBTQ social media post 'caused anxiety'"
* people getting arrested for posts that are just political speech now in Germany, Austrialia, Sweden all over really
* people getting banned / demonetized on Youtube for not following the party line on COVID even if they discuss peer reviewed studies and official data
Let's not pretend the current free speech debate is about empowering racists to say the N-word more.
* of course there is always a few nuts
Governments are supposed to do regulatory action and not partnerships. I rather have democratic laws (even with the minor power individual citizens has in EU), than governments officials being in control of content moderation at a public platform.
Here in Sweden we have a long standing political guideline when it come to politicians and media/news/culture/free speech. Politician should keep a minimum arm-length distance so to not enter temptation of controlling those part of society.
Partnership in this context is also a bit weird. The EU commission does not have a police force nor do they enforce the law. The commission role is draft legislation, arbitrate in the legislative process, engage in trade negotiations, and draw up the budget of the European Union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerial_governance
This is a very American view of politics, and this view is certainly not shared by every human on Earth. Europeans voted for such governments, along with all the benefits and drawbacks.
Being able to choose governments that align with their ideals is democracy.
We got 21 votes in a 705 member parliament, but this article is about the European Commission and not the European Parliament. The commission is appointed from each member state, but those appointed are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. It operate as the cabinet government of the European union rather than elected representatives of each country.
Thus the relation to Europeans votes are a bit more disconnected with the commission compared to the parliament. It also the commission that draws most criticism. The biggest being transparency as as the commission is not held to the same democratic rules as parliament. A EU regulation by its nature must be transparent, while the operation of the commission often is not.
Wikipedia has a sub article on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_E...
WP quote: "One assertion of democratic illegitimacy focuses on the role of the European Commission as a non elected institution being the only entity (with some few exceptions) initiating legislation."
> EU To Warn Twitter And Facebook To Stick To Rules
> The social media giants' EU operations are based in Ireland, and Brussels is worried that a wave of job losses will undermine their content moderation and data protection standards.
> But there are concerns in Brussels that Musk's libertarian free speech stance -- and the gutting of Twitter's staff -- will undermine efforts to stamp out propaganda, hate speech and harassment.
---
A) This Brussels office is not Twitter's only, or even main, presence in the EU. So this probably isn't a "fine I'll just leave" thing.
B) This comes in the middle of a spat about whether Twitter is actually allowed to stop censoring things. The FT article sounds like this was probably the office responsible for coordinating Twitter's censorship policies with government policy makers?
Most U.S. Big Tech companies have willingly set-up shop in Europe, but with increasingly acrimonious legislation putting them in the cross-hairs I wouldn't be surprised if someone like Musk tests if he can get away with merely operating from U.S. soil and ignoring EU legislation.
The Cookie Banner is one example. Most U.S. websites detect European users and show the pop-up accordingly. IMHO a U.S. web-based newspaper or site shouldn't have to do this as long as all its servers are U.S.-based.