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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."
Pretty much every aspect of your life is subject to the collective will of the society in which you live. You cry, 'Freedom of speech!', and they're saying, 'Stop the spread of dangerous hate!'. Since they have a lot more experience with domestic terror groups than Americans do, I understand why they're going that way.
Right now, you're probably right. But when groups of malcontents are allowed to fester unchecked, they eventually cross the line from being bitter to being violent... and that's when the EU approach suddenly looks better.
So far as I know, nobody has figured out how to balance the two concerns in a way that makes everyone (or even most people) happy.
I'm usually reasonably happy with Canada's position, which is something like 'free speech until you're advocating harming people'. That tends to get Americans twisted up in knots, but it works for us, and we (as much as I can speak for all Canadians) don't feel like we're living under the constant surveillance of Big Brother's telescreens.
If you're wondering why the European Union (dominated by Germany) doesn't protect freedom of speech, blame the Nazis. And blame us.
The American Slogan "Land of the Free and the home of the Brave"
This is because Free Speech and Freedom in general are dangerous things to have, and we need Bravery to deal with this constant danger.
However what has happened in the United States (and much of the world), we lost our bravery (on both sides of the political spectrum). We are afraid of Terrorist, Radicals, Racists, Minorities, Rich People, Poor People, Christians, Atheists, Muslims, Jewish.... So we are cowarding to our comfortable little corners of the world, and demanding protection from these bad ideas. This polarization increases fear, and there will be points where this fear will either lash out in escalating violence, or there will be some real Bravery, Courage and Leadership to reach out to these scary dangerous people and show that they are not so bad, and learn to disagree with a point of view, without fearing that point, and learning to accept and use use reason to help moderate the bad parts of our nature.
Until then, battle lines are being drawn, and if things don't get better there could be a Social war In America that would spread to Europe and the rest of the world, that would change the world power structure and perhaps put us into a dark ages. As the world economy would be tanked.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Name one war that the USA has won, where they did not have the French as allies.
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Pretty much every aspect of your life is subject to the collective will of the society in which you live.
This seems to be universally true - yet most people seem to have blinkered vision.
No one has a universal answer (and I doubt that one exists). Both the US and EU approaches have merits and both have drawbacks
US observers cry statism and slippery slope at the EU approaches.
They point out the democratic deficit in some structures (albeit with less corruption/bribery than campaign contributions in the US).
Non US observers point out that freedom of expression in the US is fine as long as you toe the party line.
They remember Joe MacCarthy
They point out how, for all the vaunted freedoms, the societal limitations placed upon anyone who happens to be black, gay, atheist, muslim, socialist....
Neither party comes out with much glory, both have an element of hypocrisy - yet both are much better than fundamentalist theocracies or single state tyrannies and we should celebrate that.
There's more in common than different and grandstanding, assuming moral superiority and slagging each other off doesn't help
Your bullshit "hate speech" is nothing more then censorship.
Apparently you learnt NOTHING from (British) Political Philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) to which this YouTuber beautifully summarized:
Gee, oh look, C. S. Lewis (Hey, look another smart British citizen!) said the SAME thing, except he called it Chronological Snobbery
Grow the fuck up EU already. Just maybe you should pay more attention to your history.
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Only cowards censor.
Why are conservatives always called "extreme" or "radical", and yet if left of center, there is far more tolerance.
Ahem: Throwing the Godwin Flag.
And I might remind you that that allegedly "new right wing radical party" was the National Socialist German Worker's Party. I'd call them fascist-left, not fascist-right. . .
Where did you get that from? Free speech is free speech. While no one is obligated to provide you a platform to speak from, people can freely talk about whatever they'd like, and as only the most offensive speech was ever in need of protection, that's what we're talking about. The freedom to speak (or otherwise express your thoughts).
If the government gets to label speech it doesn't like "hate speech" and suppress it, then the government has to power to suppress any and all speech. The excuse isn't the point: the suppression of speech is the point.
Again, conflict will be resolved by speech or by violence. I prefer speech. I also think my ideas are better, and feel no need to prevent my opponent from speaking - let him! The more nay idiot who disagrees with me speaks, the more he'll embarrass himself. Or, you know, the possibility exists that I'm wrong. But not about free speech - there's to much evidence from history that suppressing speech never fixes anything, merely shifts thins to violence earlier.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.