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EU Gives Ultimatum To Facebook and Twitter: Obey Us Or We'll Start Regulating (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The EU Commission has fired a shot across Facebook and Twitter's bows, having issued a proclamation decreeing that "social media platforms" must do more to remove "illegal content inciting hatred, violence and terrorism online." Although what is said in the EU proclamation is nothing new -- indeed, in the UK, the measures proposed by the EU's talking heads have been standard practice for years -- what matters here is not what is being said publicly, but instead the threat of what might happen unless Facebook appeases the bloc's leaders. The EU said that platforms should appoint dedicated points of contact for police forces and other State agencies to talk to about illegal content; appoint trusted content moderators ("flaggers," in EU-ese); and invest in "automatic detection technologies." In addition, illegal content should be deleted within "specific timeframes."
All straightforward; nothing new there, at least from the British perspective. Yet the threat is in the EU's later words: "Today's communication is a first step and follow-up initiatives will depend on the online platforms' actions to proactively implement the guidelines. The Commission will carefully monitor progress made by the online platforms over the next months and assess whether additional measures are needed."
All straightforward; nothing new there, at least from the British perspective. Yet the threat is in the EU's later words: "Today's communication is a first step and follow-up initiatives will depend on the online platforms' actions to proactively implement the guidelines. The Commission will carefully monitor progress made by the online platforms over the next months and assess whether additional measures are needed."
Where Free Speech is not acceptable!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Where Free Speech is not acceptable!
Two points. 1) Free Speech from the American perspective isn't a universal perspective. It is unique to our circumstance and our history. The EU has Free Speech but the details are a little different and that is fine in principle. We can quibble over the details of where the line on free speech should be but you have to address how you plan to control hate groups if you let their rhetoric flow freely. Europe obviously feels that it makes more sense to squash to speech up front since they lack the unified government structures to deal with it later like the US does. There are problems with this but that leads to point 2) The EU has had actual Nazis and been the epicenter or two World Wars. Disagree if you like but it's pretty understandable how they might flinch a little at the sort of rhetoric that resulted in literal catastrophic ruin to the continent and millions of deaths. If the US had the history of conflict Europe does you might have a different perspective too.
And here you highlight the main danger of this kind of approach: even if you agree with banning hate speech in principle, you are inevitably going to end up in a situation where there is selective enforcement, and that gives far more power to the people who get to choose what to enforce than anyone should be comfortable with a select group wielding.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Freedom of speech, or more generally freedom of expression, is a fundamental human right in the EU. It get balanced against the rights and freedoms of other citizens, just like it does in the US.
In the United States speech that harms other people is sometimes illegal. Fraud, credible threats, harassment etc. It's the same in Europe, it's just that Germany and some other counties consider some speech to be harmful in a more general way, i.e. promoting Nazism might not hurt someone directly but when many people do it it is likely to result in harm.
The argument is not so much if there should be any limit on speech - there is in every developed nation - it's if speech promoting Nazism can be considered to be harmful. I used to think not, but these days I'm not so sure, although I wouldn't ban it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
publish only content we approve of, or we shut you down. That truly sounds like a formula in China and Russia right now: You publish what we tell you or we will fine you. Sounds a lot like: publish what we tell you, or we shut you down. The requests by the EU sound a lot like the regulatory systems in China where you have reps you report to to approve content. People may say it's for safety but "those who give up essential liberties for a little extra security deserve neither liberty nor security". In other words, there is always going to be some people who have an unpopular or sometimes even dangerous opinion, but if we suppress it being express even non-violently, we eliminate free thought, and when you have that, you have tyranny.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
These companies should wait until the matter becomes a regulation, because only that can be contested in court. Legislation can also be contested in court, but not before it's subject to the whole parliamentary transparency process; which is what the commission (executive) is trying to avoid with these threats.
Those companies have already seen this a couple of times from various governments. It's all bluster; the commission can of course put pressure on them, but that's likely either inconsequential or outright illegal.
"We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody's civil rights to say whatever he pleases." - Adolf Hitler
The issue here is something recent anti-white supremacist protesters need to take to heart. The principle of free speech is agnostic. You cannot claim to uphold free speech while simultaneously attempting to deny it to those you disagree with. Either you believe in free speech, even when that speech offends you. Or you believe in suppression of certain viewpoints and their expression. The latter puts you in the same category as China, Russia, and Nazi Germany - the only difference is which ideas you've decided to suppress.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The idea behind free speech is that you can't counter a negative with a negative. If you consider it to be justified to impose negative policies against ideas you consider to be negative, you are by definition justifying negative policies towards your ideas by those people if the tables are ever turned. After all, from their perspective, you have negative ideas and thus they are justified in imposing negative policies against you And all of society devolves into a self-perpetuating cycle of negativity.
Free speech attempts to break this cycle by saying everyone is allowed to have their say. And instead of actively fighting against the expression of ideas we don't like, we'll simply rely on rational people (who hopefully make up the overwhelming majority of the population) to judge and dismiss those ideas as ridiculous. The proper response to white supremacist propaganda is citing historical examples of where their beliefs have led the world in the past - innocents living (or hiding) in fear, mob lynchings of innocents, genocide, world war. Convince rational people that we don't want to go down that direction again.