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."

Comments

Re:The EU

[jellomizer]

No the EU is just having a fit that there isn't a good European Social media platform. Much like how the EU targets all the other American companies selling in there domain.
These EU companies are not more ethical than American ones (I have an advanced water filtration on my home thanks to the Tax Payers of New York state) Because a French Owned company though it was a good idea to dump PFOA into the water supply, in essence had killed the towns economy, because no one wants to live in an area with polluted drinking water.
With Brexit and the intensity of the European far right. The EU has a lot of problems on its own, However I found that Europeans will not complain as much publicly as Americans, however they are more then willing to point out Americans faults.

Godwin's law has been amended

[tepples]

Ahem: Throwing the Godwin Flag.

Here's what Mike Godwin himself had to say about the neo-Nazis at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville: "By all means, compare these shitheads to the Nazis. Again and again. I'm with you."

I'd call [the NSDAP and its successors] fascist-left

Though the platform of the NSDAP included workfare programs, the rest of its nationalist, anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-Marxist ideology smells a lot like paleoconservatism, the ideology of the alt-right.

Plenty of reading on my side

[HBI]

The bottom line is that Fascism was and is a left-wing phenomenon, with goals in accord with Marxist ones. The method differed in terms of using corporations - or large firms generally - as conduits for social control of the population rather than direct government control.

Two key points that undermine the "right wing" Fascist fabrication:

Mussolini was the editor of Avanti, the largest circulation Marxist periodical in Italy during the 1910s, with views that accorded with Lenin's almost precisely. Lenin and he exchanged mutual admiration until Lenin's death in 1924.

Two quotes from Dr. Goebbels:
“Lenin is the greatest man, second only to Hitler”
“the difference between Communism and the Hitler faith is very slight.” - both from the NYT in 1925.

"once Hitler was in power in 1933, most German Communists became ardent Nazis." - Norman Friedman, "The Fifty Year War"

Analyzing Fascist policy, whether in Italy or Germany or elsewhere, shows all the same indications of totalization of society, eliminating class boundaries, and providing guaranteed jobs, health care, government supplied vacations (have a look at the "Strength through Joy" program in Germany), etc.

Last point, Marx himself was a virulent anti-Semite, despite being Jewish by birth. Mussolini was not. Hitler was, but we knew that already.