EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/no-longer-acceptable-for-platforms-to-take-key-decisions-alone-eu-commission-says/

by sampo • 6 years ago

277 258 6 years ago

euractiv.com

yummybear• 6 years ago

You really have to walk a censorship tight rope as a social media. You need to remove content that targets minorities and hate speech or face consequence, but only when it applies to the bottom 99% of society - apparently.

The fact that the EU seems to want control over who gets to express themselves freely, is even more troubling than the inconsistent rules applies by the media themselves.

Talanes4• 6 years ago

Exactly this. The problem lies in the power to control expression lying in too few hands. Just having the same media system, but with the government directing who they ban is just passing the buck.

ortusdux• 6 years ago

I've been wondering how much of all this is an (over?)reaction to the threat of the repeal of section 230. How many of the people making these decisions have reciently had meetings with legal where they learn what changes they would need to make to not risk lawsuits. Allowing governmental oversight, with legal protection, would sound pretty good in comparison.

disgrunt• 6 years ago

Suddenly it is very easy for the powers that be to see the threat these platforms pose. Deplatform little people? Fine with us. Deplatform a head of state? Can't have that!

Facebook, Twitter, et al are going to regret the pandora's box of unintended consequences they just opened up with this move.

Traster• 6 years ago

Frankly, facebook, twitter et al. really didn't have much choice. They've been as tolerant as they can be.

It was parler that screwed things up. It was meant to be a right wing equivalent to the left wing social media companies (who, coincidentally, are incredibly anti-union, anti-corporate tax, and anti-workers right, or as was previously known incredibly right wing). Instead they produced a platform that was rampant with death threats, resulting in the only (overtly) right wing platform collapsing.

boplicity• 6 years ago

I've run a niche "social media" site for 12 years. There is no tightrope. The problem is that these large platforms want the benefits of scale, without being responsible for dealing with the problems of scale. It is imminently possible to build a thriving social media site that enforces standards of behavior. HN is a good example. However, it is work to actually enforce those standards. It takes leadership. Facebook, Twitter, etc, are not interested in providing that type of leadership, and would likely require both a huge economic investment, and a significant change in business strategy.

majormajor3• 6 years ago

What would happen if Trump was on your site and constantly violated your standards of behaviour?

mongol• 6 years ago

Exactly this. They want both control, and ability to wash their hands, while running their operations at scale. There is the famous saying, "time, quality and cost, choose two". There is a similar "social media law" I believe, that is yet to be stated, but where scale is one parameter.

andrewstuart2• 6 years ago

I'm left wing but I despair for the future of the left.

If the right had control of the tech companies it would have removed left content years ago and never blinked or even thought twice about it.

The right never agonises over its own strong decisions, whereas the left, if it takes strong action , wrings its hands in agony about whether it has done the correct thing or not.

That's why in the long run the right will beat the left because it is utterly shameless in taken any action it can to assert power, whilst the left is reluctant to take any strong action.

The left scores a knockdown on the right via social media restriction, but soon enough, the left will offer a hand to help the right back up so they can win the fight.

loxs4• 6 years ago

The sad thing is that this is exactly how the right sees the actions of the left. and it's even worse, as they (the left) are now winning. Their eyes are not blinking - they don't care about freedom of speech or fair game.

In the long run, both sides start to see this modus operandi as completely normal. Censorship and vengeance to the other side are completely acceptable.

As a libertarian, I am utterly horrified.

j_walter3• 6 years ago

This. We don't have civil discourse anymore...people just yell and call people names. You don't like what the other person says they are a "libtard"...or a "racist". You don't like what they are doing online, get them kicked off or dox them to your friends. Justify online bullying like it's a sport. Now it's escalated to not just banning them from social media...but a coordinated effort to destroy the alternative platform they had.

grahamburger3• 6 years ago

What is the proper libertarian response to current events? Asking in good faith, honestly curious.

To be fair, I'm curious about what the response would be to BLM riots+politician involvement, MAGA riots+president involvement, and big tech censorship in response.

ndiscussion• 6 years ago

I used to be a libertarian until I realized my ideals would lead to my own party's censorship and demise.

This meme sums it up: https://imgur.com/a/DZJoWKa

j_walter3• 6 years ago

Spoken like someone that only sees right and left. In fact many people on the "right" were tired of seeing FB and Twitter control so much and they were constantly told it's a private platform so go make your own. They did so, and then those same companies worked in tandem to destroy Parler. Signal and WhatsApp are used to coordinate violent and destructive riots...we don't see anyone trying to take them down. The opinion is they do more good than bad...despite the ability to use them for either purpose.

There are people on the left and right that are power hungry and make decisions only to benefit themselves...however some people actually care about freedoms and fairness. Bad and illegal behavior will happen in any system with freedoms...banning those systems is not the answer.

sbuk• 6 years ago

This is the paradox of tolerance, which says for a tolerant society to remain tolerant, it cannot tolerate intolerance.

Many people need to learn the difference between de-platforming and censorship - in this case Parler is essentially being de-platformed by private businesses who no longer wish to do business with them, which is their right. As a free speech advocate, surely you must accept that that extends to a company of people, be that 1, 1000 or 10000 people, otherwise you're advocating for double-standards (see above). Forcibly compelling businesses (which include sole-traders or individuals) to conduct business with anyone that wants to avail themselves of their product, which is what the EC is advocating, if far more worrisome for free speech.

Moreover, there is nothing stopping the "silenced" organisations and people from creating their own platform. Blocking organisations and individuals from accessing the internet is problematic, but in this situation somewhat ironic. The side cheering the bans (no, not leftist, America doesn't really have left-wing politics) were pushing net neutrality and the internet as a public service while those being de-platforming were adamant that this would be a bad thing.

bmaisonp2• 6 years ago

What makes you think that these platforms are actually taking action for "the left?" Is silicon valley actually a leftist paradise full of leftist megacorperations?

j_walter3• 6 years ago

Ummm...yes

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/facebook-inc/summary?all=20...

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/summary?id=D...

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/amazon-com/summary?all=2020...

saiya-jin• 6 years ago

Edit: to all those downvoters, I've seen how socialism/communism simply doesn't work long term, how it ruins society and decent people living in it, first hand, as much as possible. So its a bit more personal than anonymous internet ninja philosophers so popular not only here these days.

What you write doesn't make much sense. The world isn't black and white, and left and right have whole spectrum. The ultra (left or right) never overthink their decision, always feel righteous even if heading straight to hell. If you think moderate left (ie EU from US perspective), it might be a correct assessment from certain point of view (not a big fan of EU here, I like the theory but not many things in practice).

Moderate right/centrists could be described exactly same things as you say about left.

Why right might beat left, at least in theory, is because it gives people more money directly. People like that. tey like to have some control over such an important thing. Instead of massive taxation, that in ideal world isn't stolen in some way (in reality much/most of it is, or at least very badly mismanaged) and spent in social, health, education, infrastructure etc.

Once folks see real money, they have at least some control/choice over it. Even if kindergardens cost a fortune (there are other options in some cases), and paid maternity leave is shorter (you can stay longer but unpaid). And health care might cost something (but apart from US its not a bad idea generally, works great in Switzerland for example).

Oh and don't forget the lean state aparate, very attractive unless you are actually some semi-useless otherwise unemployable state bureaucrat. And so on.

mhh__• 6 years ago

I don't think the left could be reasonably construed to be in charge of social media. By output there's a lot of socialists online, for example, but they're not in charge.

Maybe some hyper-partisan American concept of leftism.

I absolutely agree that the right is partly successful because it isn't afraid to punch down from the status-quo. I'm a centre-right liberal democrat (UK), so I'm no socialist - although I firmly believe that most right-wingers are of the "capitalism for you, socialism for me"-type in practice.

luckylion2• 6 years ago

I don't think the left could be reasonably construed to be in charge of social media. By output there's a lot of socialists online, for example, but they're not in charge.

You could just split it into socially and economically. The social progressives are in total control of social media, search, and academia and are closing in on control in traditional media (think newspapers, TV, Hollywood). They're not economically left wing though, they're economically libertarian.

The capitalists used to work with the socially conservative, but have switched and are now aligned with the socially progressive. Might be because of a generational change, might be because they found to be able to make more money in a more progressive environment.

tsherr2• 6 years ago

The right says "all of us are together, and we have to keep those guys out."

The left says "we're all together, but we should convince everyone to come to our side."

FUD and tribalism are easier to win with.

turbinerneiter6• 6 years ago

Future of the Left btw. is one of the best bands ever and are very helpful if you need a distraction from all this BS.

I fully agree on the notion that the right wields every power it can get, while the left doesn't.

We now have two years ahead of us where the Democrats are in full power of the US government. Let's see what they do with it. I'm especially interested if they are going to make sure to help themselves for the next election, by combating the voter suppression tactics that the Republicans use.

andrewstuart2• 6 years ago

My guess is that the Democrats will be unlikely to make radical changes needed to fix all the things that need to be fixed.

I see the left side of politics generally as weak and unable to take strong action.

The left likes to listen - an admirable trait, but listening and collaborating too much dilutes outcomes.

Veen2• 6 years ago

Your analysis is not useful because no such entities as "the left" and "the right" exist. It's not remotely helpful to lump complex and differentiated phenomena into binary categories so you can attach simple motivations and behaviors to them.

mistermann3• 6 years ago

I agree, but will offer a supplementary idea to:

It's not remotely helpful to lump complex and differentiated phenomena into binary categories so you can attach simple motivations and behaviors to them

It's not "helpful", to the general populace, but it is extremely useful to existing power structures to divide the populace up along various dimensions and then "attach (via sophisticated media narratives) simple motivations and behaviors to them". Advertising and marketing does just this, and it works quite well, and is there not plentiful evidence that at least suggests the same may be happening to some degree in the realm of politics?

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-clear-pill-part-1-of-5-th...

When people hear one story, they tend to ask: is this true? When they hear two stories, they tend to ask: which one of these is true? Isn’t this a neat trick? Maybe our whole world is built on it. Any point on which both poles concur is shared story: “uncontroversial, bipartisan consensus.”

Shared story has root privilege. It has no natural enemies and is automatically true. Injecting ideas into it is nontrivial and hence lucrative; this profession is called “PR.”

There is no reason to assume that either pole of the spectrum of conflict, or the middle, or the shared story, is any closer to reality than the single pole of the one-story state.

Dividing the narrative has not answered the old question: is any of this true? Rather, it has… dodged it. Stagecraft!

This is even better than supposing that, since we fought Hitler and Hitler was bad, we must be good. These very basic fallacies, or psychological exploits, are deeply embedded in our political operating systems. Like bugs in code, they are invisible until you look straight at them. Then they are obvious.

krona• 6 years ago

It's rather infantile to think forcing millions of people you disapprove of off a platform would make them magically disappear.

Does closing your eyes make the monsters under your bed go away?

didibus• 6 years ago

You probably should say the "center" instead of the "left". Or maybe the "liberals". That's because the "left" historically has been as assertive as the "right" if you look at the extreme communist parties VS fascists/feudal parties.

I do think you have a point though, but you can't be liberal and authoritarian at the same time. So to push for liberal ideas and laws/rights, while also pushing to enforce it through anti-liberal means is pretty contradictory, and so it makes sense most liberals don't do so.

Also remember that liberal societies are the exception in human history, not the rule. Almost never have people rallied around the idea that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property and governments must not violate these rights.

luckylion2• 6 years ago

I believe you're projecting a picture you'd like to see. One that is painting the side you consider yourself to be a part of as morally clean and just, while the other side is reprehensible and shameless.

It has little to do with reality, and it's obvious that you haven't spent time with conservatives. It's not useful to only learn about those who think differently from yourself by listening to what those who think like you say about them. Your perception seems heavily based on shrill far left voices. It's essentially a mirror image of what somebody on the far-right thinks about progressives after hearing about what they do/did/want to do by listening to shrill far-right voices.

jariel7• 6 years ago

This is a very contemporary American view.

Look at the situation globally, over the 20th century and it doesn't look quite like that.

China, Soviets, Cuba, Venezuela, Poland, Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong etc. etc. there's a long list of various kinds of 'authorities' of every kind.

FrameworkFred2• 6 years ago

I see the argument the commission is making, but when it comes to the question of inciting violence on privately owned systems, is it really the right idea to move it to some sort of public committee when the target is "too big to censor?"

orange_tee2• 6 years ago

Remember that Facebook and Twitter only acted after the fact. For them, Trump was too big to censor too. They only took action days before he is out of office when it was guaranteed he would leave.

tsherr2• 6 years ago

FB and Twitter didn't deplatform Trump because he was a nasty bastard who was inciting revolt. They did it because the Democrats won and they want to suck up.

FrameworkFred2• 6 years ago

That's not altogether true. They've been footnoting his posts where there's been a mismatch with reality.

bjeds• 6 years ago

I'm impressed that the EU is taking action in this case and I hope they also look into the shutdown of Parler under antitrust legislation.

Parler was the number one downloaded social media app in the app store after all. According to BBC the most popular accounts on Parler were people like Sean Hannity and Ted Cruz, who each had followers in the millions.

Of course Parler had a problem with some - maybe even many - violent people, like the Washington rioters, but it seems to me that the vast majority of Parler users were not violent people, but fairly normal republicans of the kind that are still not banned on Twitter and Facebook (like the two persons I mentioned).

Removing the hyperbole on each side, I think it'd be interesting if the EU looked into this to conclude if the shutdown of Parler was ok or not.

africanboy4• 6 years ago

I think EU doesn't have an opinion on Parler, that's a business relationship gone wrong.

The leak of the Parler content shows that they were actively moderating the platform to push it on the far right side, using millions of fake accounts with admin privileges.

So Amazon terminated their account.

The ban of Trump from social networks is a different topic, I don't think Trump has a big fan base in EU, but it's the perfect excuse to demand what many have been advocating for years now: political control of the social network decisions, given that they can influence the public opinion (Facebook admitted today that their platform was used to spread violence in Myanmar)

I have personally advocated for putting social network under public scrutiny or close their operations in EU.

I am glad that the European Union is finally taking steps in that direction.

EDIT:

source -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731121

leothecool• 6 years ago

they were actively moderating the platform to push it on the far right side

Do you have a source for this? I tried googling it for ~5 minutes, but my google-fu is too weak.

user9822• 6 years ago

According to BBC the most popular accounts on Parler were people like Sean Hannity and Ted Cruz...fairly normal republicans of the kind that are still not banned on Twitter and Facebook (like the two persons I mentioned).

The two persons you mentioned as "fairly normal republicans" had their contact information carried by an armed terrorist who invaded the Capitol on the hunt for "bad guys": https://twitter.com/johnkruzel/status/1349061894418685953

LocalH• 6 years ago

That was a disingenuous quote, you merged parts of two different sentences as if they were one.

trianglem• 6 years ago

You’ve got that wrong. Europe want to push for takedowns to be enshrined in legislation. It’s not the free speech panacea push you’re looking for.

fogetti• 6 years ago

Where did you read that? The article doesn't mention it.

raverbashing• 6 years ago

Freedom of expression on platforms is important

But it absolutely does not matter for a person in a position of power who has dedicated dedicated public information channels

Twitter is right, in the same way any journalist has the right to publish or not a statement by the president

proactivesvcs7• 6 years ago

Assuming that a company's terms of service are deemed fair and legal, why would it be "no longer acceptable" to apply them? I couldn't care less how high profile someone is, what public office they hold; if they break the agreement they made with a service provider, they should be subject to the consequences they agreed to.

What I would like to see is a company being obliged to enforce its terms of service promptly, and not allow profitable rule-breakers to continue. Especially when their abuse of the service also breaks laws.

BobbyJo• 6 years ago

I think we need to acknowledge that a lot of what these agreements outline is, to a large degree, subjective. If human language, or expression in general, weren't contextual and up for interpretation, then I think this would be a viable way of looking at things, but that simply isn't the case.

So long as there is room for interpretation, and the consequences (politically, economically, etc.) of those interpretations are potentially far reaching, leaving it up to private companies with no oversight isn't a good option.

majormajor3• 6 years ago

So you have n companies each applying their own subjective judgement over their own networks, or you have 1 government applying its own subjective judgement over all networks in that country.

It's highly unlikely that the latter is more friendly to fringe or extremist views (setting aside whether or not that's a good thing).

neogodless4• 6 years ago

"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." [0]

-- Winston Churchill

For any kind of platform that allows arbitrary users some level of control over the content that will be hosted, the options for ensuring that content is not harmful are:

* Community Moderation: users control contributing and moderating content. The platform chooses moderators, or enables voting for them. This gives users and all people (i.e. citizens) the most power, but has the most potential for abuse of the system to enable using the platform to host, spread and share harmful content.

* Platform Moderation: wholly moderated by platform chosen moderators. This is probably the most common system. The platform will use its own set of values and policies to decide what to moderate, and will likely target the most popular content deemed harmful. Per platform, this gives platforms the most power, but platforms much compete with each other

* Government Moderation: moderation likely by the platform, but with oversight from government - policy and values may be defined by the government; failure to moderate according to the government legislation could result in penalties or termination of the platform. If the government has sufficient checks and balances and citizen influence, this may be a desirable system, but if the government is not "of and for the people", it could also be used by the government to moderate opponents of the government as decided by that government. Anyone opposing the absolute power of the government may find their content "moderated" away. This is the stuff of nightmares for the founding fathers.

"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." [1]

-- Thomas Jefferson

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_democracy

[1] https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/whe...

proactivesvcs7• 6 years ago

That's a fair statement but as long as a company is not found to be applying bias to their application of their rules, again I see no problem. In the instances we're discussing though, there has been clear violation of terms over a sustained period of time.

rektide• 6 years ago

this argument seems well & sound to me, if I replace "private companies" with "private monopolies". right now I don't think we know how monopolistic these companies are & i don't think we've tried doing much competing. so yes we are under the seat of a few big entities. it's our fault. athe failure of us, our unwillingness to compete, does not give the nation's of the world preimminent domain. the rights of the private entities to converse as they would is to be respected, including excluding unwanted voices. if you have something to say find your own places to say it.

these garbage fire bonanzas ablaze with calls for violence & insurrection with the flimsiest fakest of fabricated basis underneath are unfortunately really bad tests of how monopolistic big tech is, because they doom themselves, seem rankly incompetent, destined to self immolate. competitor platformsust follow some law, which is in many cases what companies do when they kick people off: protect themselves & the rest of the platform from grave risks. i believe companies should be encouraged to find their own ways to remain safe, that nation's ordering them around to control speech in certain governmentally dictated ways would be horrific. cyberspace doesn't deserve this infringement, people don't, even big tech, sucky g useless as it is, doesn't. this isn't china. we don't do that here.

lmilcin2• 6 years ago

Well, for one, democratic countries are supposed to be governed by representatives elected by people, not by corporate boards.

Ability to selectively enable or disable people from being able to access voters is tantamount to having a huge influence on election results.

While in the past you could avoid using social media, today this is THE way to reach most of voters. Most people no longer pay substantial attention to what happens on television, forgot what radio is (it is a little bit of noise your car gives so that it is not quiet) and don't read printed papers.

Now, this time it happened for Trump and we can discuss whether this was or was not a good decision, but the question is who is going to wield the power like that in the future and whether it is even permissible do to something like that.

On one side you have the idea of free speech, but then added to social media you have inevitable disinformation as anybody can get amplified and amount of information is such that it is not possible to verify and vet it.

In the past you would have handful of news-generating organizations and it was easy to spot and call false information. But this is forever gone, there seems to be a need to find out some kind of new equilibrium that will allow detect and filter misinformation without anybody having power to singlehandedly "vanish" people from public life.

proactivesvcs7• 6 years ago

You discuss governance, access to voters, wielding of power and free speech but not the meat of my comment: a customer not playing by the rules they agreed to, and the implication that they should be allowed to break the rules they agreed to simply because they're important. An organisation must now allow people to flaunt their rules, helpless to remove them despite the abuse that they perpetrate?

quotemstr• 6 years ago

A corporation is an abstraction, an artificial person created to pool resources and do business at scale. It's a good, useful abstraction --- but like all abstractions, it's leaky, and sometimes the abstraction does more harm than good. Governments are run for the benefit of natural people, not artificial ones, and when the latter behave in ways detrimental to the interests of the former, there's nothing wrong with setting rules.

agiroth4• 6 years ago

For someone whose username is 'quotemstr' (quote master), that post is a great, short explanation of that idea and very.. quotable.

engineer_222• 6 years ago

Yeah, so, basically, and I can't believe I have to spell this out, the EU Commission is saying "we need new laws".

proactivesvcs7• 6 years ago

Please, continue to spell this out. Laws that forbid an organisation from applying its rules because that organisation is popular? Laws that compel an organisation to allow users to perpetrate abuse if they're important in one country? Where does liability now fall when say, incitement to violence end up with someone losing an eye, a life?

Don't misunderstand me - I absolutely think that those who allowed Trump to directly incite violence for years have blood on their hands. They absolutely have liability for this. They disgust me. But now suddenly the conversation seems to be that Twitter, for example, should have been forbidden from kicking Trump off now or years ago when they should have. So who would share the blame now?

jariel7• 6 years ago

The power imbalance means companies can use all sorts of crazy leverage to do all sorts of things that wouldn't really be fair in a free market, and certainly not a free market of ideas etc..

I'll bet $100 that companies would love to wash their hands of a lot of this stuff, and just be able to 'comply' with some regulatory things so they can't be blamed or get into trouble one way or another.

Karunamon• 6 years ago

I'd take that bet. Leaked conversations from Twitter and Google insiders show that the platform owners are well aware of the power their platforms give them. That's a power that can't be accurately measured in dollars, and speaking purely selfishly on their behalf, one that they'd be fools to give up.

azernik3• 6 years ago

Because terms of service are vague and, more importantly, selectively enforced.

Selective enforcement of private contracts is totally legal, and the EU('s executive branch) is uncomfortable with the public policy implications of that when it comes to social media and would like new laws passed to add extra regulation on uniformity and specificity of moderation policies.

proactivesvcs7• 6 years ago

The selective enforcement - particularly when it's overt - really grinds my gears. When they are finally applied that doesn't make said application invalid or incorrect.

I think that some cases whereby $importantperson isn't banned because they're important are valid. It helps to have a public and verifiable record of a public office holder making provably false claims, particularly when a warning is then slathered over said bullshit. But the thought of a government body deciding when a company may and may not enforce its rules is chilling.

DanBC• 6 years ago

Because we have articles 10 and 11 of the Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union, and the EU does protect these rights.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12...

--- https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Article 10

Freedom of thought, conscience and religion

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

2. The right to conscientious objection is recognised, in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of this right.

Article 11

Freedom of expression and information

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.

imnotlost• 6 years ago

Does that mean, in the EU context, that the EU (whatever EU organization that may be), or the individual EU nations can compel private companies to publish certain speech?

Are all EU citizens entitled to publish on Twitter for instance, and can the EU force Twitter to publish?

Is that the EU version of freedom of expression and information?

wolco52• 6 years ago

How are Germany's Nazi laws permitted under this framework?

vmilner• 6 years ago

Just realised that this charter contains a rule against double jeopardy:

"No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings for an offence for which he or she has already been finally acquitted or convicted within the Union in accordance with the law."

which slightly surprised me, as the UK has allowed this for about 10 years, (I think). (I guess "finally" may be a getout.)

shripadk5• 6 years ago

It's not just as simple as you make it sound. What this Censorship has done is conveyed to the World that American Government cannot be trusted. That America has 2 power centers not 1. The two power centers being American Government and Big Tech.

Any ban or removal should come from the elected Government. In this case it is the US Congress. This is what the World expects as this is how all Democratically elected Governments all over the World function. It is the Government which has a final say.

Now when Big Tech unilaterally decides to censor a sitting US President and bans a rival competitor this will cause every World leader and Government to sit up and take note. Everyone will ask themselves: are we now supposed to trust US Government for its word? What if tomorrow a private company decides to censor the US Government? If they can ban the US President's account they wield more power than even elected representatives. Why then should we liaison with US Government and why not directly talk to Big Tech as they seem to hold the power over even the US President.

Then it goes further than that: how do we trust that the incoming President won't be censored? Since all communications happen through a digital forum where one of the Big Tech companies is an intermediary in relaying such communications what is the guarantee that the communication is not tampered with? When Big Tech enjoys so much power in US, that it can censor the Government itself, then why can't this also be possible? If Big Tech can attach disclaimers to a sitting US President's content then why can't they tamper with the messaging too?

This sort of confusion existed for countries like Pakistan which has dual power centers: the elected Government and the military. You won't know whom to talk to as one can override the other. Which is why you have so many successful coups in Pakistan. What Big Tech has done is set a very dangerous precedent. Now no World leader will trust the word of the American Government at face value and will double/triple check every communication.

turbinerneiter6• 6 years ago

I fully agree that these decisions have to be done by democratic institutions. They also have to be very liberal and very careful and erring on the side of not taking things down.

My biggest problem however is the EU commission acting like they are a democratic institution.

The president of the commission didn't even run in the election. We were promised that the candidate of the winning party would become president of the commission, but then he didn't and they gave us von der Leyen instead, who never really accomplished anything but hiring consultants. And even that she couldn't do right.

The whole storming the caption hill thing is also funny in that regard. Now we suddenly defend that place as this important symbolic institution of democracy, and how dare they! But in reality, we all know that the people in there spend most of their time sucking up to their donors to stay in power. And we know that they very, very, very often make decision that favour their donors to the detriment of the ... voters.

jlokier• 6 years ago

I think your comment gives the misleading impression Von der Leyen was not elected at all. So for readers who may not know the system:

Von der Leyen's appointment, and the EU Commission, were both subject to approval votes by MEPs of the EU Parliament, who are elected by EU citizens in all member countries using proportional representation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_der_Leyen_Commission#Elect...

On 16 July 2019, European Parliament took a vote on the proposal by the European Council and elected Von der Leyen with 383 votes (374 votes needed).
The Commission was approved by European Parliament on 27 November 2019, receiving 461 votes, with 157 against and 89 abstentions.

turbinerneiter6• 6 years ago

She was not elected by the voters. The voters were told that the winning party's candidate would be the commission president.

Now von der Leyen is. She did not run in the election.

This is a lot more similar to the electoral college making the losing candidate president than people want to admit.

We elected the parliament under the impression that the MEPs would then elect the candidate of the party that got the most votes. Then, they didn't.

The EU is not very democratic and if we don't fix that, we will lose it. And that is the last thing I want. I want the EU to succeed.

jariel7• 6 years ago

"You voted for A a long time ago over there, who appointed B over here, who supported C up there, who finally backed D - the leader you never heard of - so it's all very democratic!"

Von der Leyen was not elected in any reasonable sense of the term.

Voters went to the polls without knowing who she was, or her platform.

They thought they were effectively voting for someone else.

They were told that the 'deal' was that so-and-so would be the victor - but at the last minute after the election the people with power changed their minds and changed norms, and in a completely untransparent backroom deal - they chose a different leader.

The President of EU Commission is a bad example of positive democracy and it's almost impossible to justify on those terms.

It is what it is unfortunately, I'm not sure what the right answer is, but the current situation isn't near perfect.

As for the statement - it's reasonable that there should be regulations - but the EU leadership shouldn't make such bold edicts: "You cannot do this, you must do as we say" - not a good way to start. They don't have this kind of legitimacy.

They should position it as: "We don't believe corporations should be making these decisions without a framework provided by the people of the EU, so we'd like to work with them to provide some regulatory leadership"

sampo2• 6 years ago

European Union analog for America:

State governors are not voted, but chosen by the state legislatures: EU countries' prime ministers

Replace senate with a meeting of state governors: European Council, Council of EU

Replace president with a commission of 50 presidents (EU: 27), one from each state, chosen by the state legislature, not by elections: EU Commission

State legislatures are voted as normal (but proportional voting, not FPTP). The US house of representatives is voted as normal (again proportional voting). But the house can't propose new legislation, only approve or decline proposals from the senate and the commission.

neogodless4• 6 years ago

I have a sister comment I think is relevant here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25754588

But the key in my comment is the precondition the government is truly "of and for the people", and thus any moderation they did benefited "the people", and not the government which likely holds more power than the people.

What happened with Trump was that he convinced his followers that it was OK to only get their information from the places that agreed with him, de facto making anything he says the only trusted source of information. This is the essence of political censorship. By taking away competing sources of information, you can basically write your own rule book, because those that only hear from you couldn't fathom a different reality.

Information needs to survive the competitive landscape and emerge as valid. Information that isn't put through the wringer should not be trusted.

sampo2• 6 years ago

My biggest problem however is the EU commission acting like they are a democratic institution.

You have a valid note on the lack of democracy in the EU commission. But about the topic at hand, both Merkel (Germany) and Macron (France) have directly expressed this same opinion about Twitter, as the EU commission. And Merkel and Macron have more direct democratic leadership mandate, than the EU commission.

"Germany and France oppose Trump's Twitter exile"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/merkel-se...

azernik3• 6 years ago

I don't think the EU is (or would ever) propose that these decisions be made on an EU level; generally this kind of stuff, e.g. GDPR, requires each individual state to set up their own regulatory agency implementing the standard EU-wide rules.

syntaxing• 6 years ago

I know this is a heated topic but I really don’t understand what the other options are. Having businesses dictate who they want to serve seems like censorship but having the government dictate it seems way worse. I’m not sure how to decouple or balance the freedom of will as a business, freedom of will as a person and the societal mandate of the majority (which is how democracy works? It’s always about the majority values).

LoSboccacc• 6 years ago

what the other options are

add political views into the list of non-discrimination laws and let the courts decide, if it's important enough to have to be legislated, that's the closes framework upon which to model it.

lima2• 6 years ago

Having businesses dictate who they want to serve seems like censorship but having the government dictate it seems way worse.

That's what judges and courts are for. Neither government nor platforms should be able to make these decisions unilaterally.

johntb86• 6 years ago

Judges and courts are part of the government. In particular, they apply laws (including the constitution) that were written by the government.

zajio1am3• 6 years ago

Having businesses dictate who they want to serve seems like censorship but having the government dictate it seems way worse.

Leaving B2B aside, for B2C it is basic consumer protection laws common in EU. If a service is offered to a general public, then provider may not arbitrarily exclude someone from using it. If a provider excludes someone for violating ToS, then the excluded one may dispute that at appropriate authority / state office.

ozim2• 6 years ago

Well do we have anyone here with locked google account who went that route?

SulfurHexaFluri3• 6 years ago

The problem is these companies are too big and powerful now. If a small business refuses someone its no big deal, go to another business. But when these titans join together to make an action that affects you and there are no alternatives left, thats a different case.

If both Apple and Google ban your app when the app is legal and useful, is it good for society that there is no way around this?

tantalor2• 6 years ago

"Legal and useful" are but two criteria Apple uses to approve or refuse apps. They also care about safety, performance, and design.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

pmontra• 6 years ago

They could bring those issues to courts. It takes time but it is normal in almost every other context.

khawkins• 6 years ago

It doesn't have to be a system where the government can pick and choose who they want to ban/keep, but rather a system where businesses must go through a legal government process to ban someone themselves. That platforms need to be held to the same freedom of speech standards the US government is held to.

dogma1138• 6 years ago

No, just have certain businesses operate just like utility providers do which means they can't decide who they provide service too as long as it's within their service area.

You local electrical company probably can't shut off the power even to a meth lab as long as they are paying their bills, and even if they do not you are usually required to go through a rigorous process before you can take action.

This isn't really about freedom of will, this is about the bottom line and companies trying to score cheap points. If it was pretty darn clear that no amount of pressure that does not go through the courts could make Amazon or Twilio cancel Parler there wouldn't be as much noise about it.

There's a reason why no one is tweeting at the power or water companies to cut off their services to the Trump campaign, it's not because there aren't people that would like to see that happening, but because even the most deranged of them know that it cannot happen.

You already have precedence for this, back when corporate towns were a thing that's where the public square concept emerged despite the entire town technically being corporate property it was deemed that people cannot be silenced on the streets or in the town square.

The issue here is that the Internet isn't treated as a public square but as solely corporate property and yes sadly without a bunch of corporations the internet doesn't actually exists.

You cannot get to the point that you need to essentially become a global Tier 1 ISP before you can put on a service that does not break any laws but that would essentially be immune to being canceled, and if you want to monetize it you probably need to become major payment processor if not an an acquiring and and issuing bank too because as we've seen in the past PayPal/PCI can easily prevent you from taking any payments.

We do not have an open and distributed network a handful of companies can block any content they want at any time, TOR, VPN's or anything else won't save you and won't help you your ISP can block anything it wants with a single line in a config file and if it's not on Google it might as well not be accessible. Your hosting options today are rather limited especially for a platform that needs to have a global reach and that you couldn't take down with a single 5G connection.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft and a tiny handful of others are the only ones who can provide you with that infrastructure, if you are going with a smaller or more traditional hosting provider then there are only a handful of CDNs that can provide you with content distribution and DDOS protection/mitigation services.

If you want to grant companies the same freedom you grant to people when it comes to making decisions you need an actual free market for that, but globally the internet isn't a free market and no one can make the argument that it is free yet alone a free market when in order to provide a legal service (regardless of how distasteful it is) without any of the existing market players being able to completely shut you down you have to build a Bank of America, a Visa,a DeepOcean and a Cloudflare first.

dan-robertson2• 6 years ago

Surely there is a middle ground: let businesses operate how they please so long as they follow the law, and have the law require them to act in a way which is considered reasonable. If you’re a business trying to sell something then you are required to be somewhat honest in how you represent the thing, especially if you are selling some kind of food. If you’re a bank then you are required to be fair to a certain extent in how you choose the customers you serve and what services you offer them.

I don’t see why a business that presents itself as a quasi-public space that is generally open to all at no cost should not have some duty to be faithful to the way it represents itself and to treat its users fairly.

myrryr2• 6 years ago

Surely there is a middle ground: let businesses operate how they please so long as they follow the law, and have the law require them to act in a way which is considered reasonable.

A lot of people would argue that is the situation we have now.

The government wasn't against twitter because they were looking like they were going to remove right wing stuff, they were angry because they were being fact checked.

hackeraccount• 6 years ago

"reasonable" is to my mind exactly the question; who gets to decide what reasonable is?

All the leverage is in the margins. Are the people we're kicking off arguing for a change or are they supporting people arguing for violent change?

You want to make that call? Or more honestly would you like _me_ to make that call for you?

njharman2• 6 years ago

It’s not always about majority values.

Large part of the bill of rights exists to protect individuals from the majority.

Anti-discrimination, fair housing many other laws exist to protect against majority.

Democracy is not autocratic rule of the majority. It is rule by compromise.

grej2• 6 years ago

An unrestricted democracy can be exactly that. But hopefully, a country has sufficient guardrails in its constitution to prevent it from becoming a mob rule.

undersuit• 6 years ago

An option is the government makes their own social network to compete with the private networks. Then the government can make their own rules.

dougmwne• 6 years ago

No freedom is absolute. As a society, we choose where to draw the line for the common good. We can choose to make whatever laws we want to regulate business and technology. Indeed, we already have made many, many of them.

Tech benefited enormously from moving fast and being mostly unregulated as a result. Looking at the finance industry though, every new law was written in blood or tears over the course of centuries. Now blood has been spilled by social media in the US Capitol and the world has taken notice.

It's not going to be easy or fast, but good policy can help keep Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg from controlling the political outcomes of every democracy in the world.

fulafel• 6 years ago

We have other more democratic models of handling this in distributed social networks that aren't under centralised corporate control. Email, telephone system, Mastodon... Federation and regulated platforms, and some other ways of organisation let you have localised systems of censorship that aren't all-powerful in the network.

jively• 6 years ago

This is the same issue that faces newspapers, publishers and TV stations. At some point the scale of reach and influence come into conflict with public policy and governance.

Newspapers are horribly regulated and most TV stations can say what they like within reason - especially in the US where being fair and balanced is no longer a requirement to run a news service.

This jurisdictional problem affects all media and isn't just limited to social platforms.

The difference with TV and Newspapers is that they can have their licenses revoked. So there is a degree of power wielded by the government over what is acceptable locally.

In contrast, social media infringes on sovereign power by existing and influencing on a global scale without being regulated on a local one. A great example is name suppression during trials, it might be illegal for a newspaper in France to publish a name, but that doesn't stop one in the UK from doing it, and because the paper has a website, that foreign paper inadvertently breaks local law in France because anyone can look it up, but it can't be held accountable.

Sovereignty and global digital media do not intersect well without an interface - and that just doesn't exist.

Expect more balkanisation of the Internet in the future as govts take back some control over media within their borders.

And no, I'm not advocating for dictator-like suppression of free-speech, but a mechanism of accountability for foreign firms breaking local laws.

It's a shame that the real-world example has to be Trump, if this had happened to Malala, or Thunberg, or the Pope, the advocacy for oversight and accountability would be a lot easier to digest.

ozim2• 6 years ago

Balkanisation of the internet is a feature not a bug and those companies are already too big for too long.

sto_hristo• 6 years ago

This is so funny. It's like two people in a sword fight. But the sword handles are actual blades as well. So whenever someone draws his sword to cut the opponent, he also cuts himself. What a way to kick off 2020 vol. 2

jti107• 6 years ago

Twitter is a private company enforcing their terms of service. They are not required to give you a platform to express your speech.

pyrale2• 6 years ago

Twitter is a private company enforcing their terms of service.

Being a private company has never meant you're allowed to rule as you wish on your turf. I believe the history of company towns in the US provides plenty of reasons for that.

While platforms can't really be compared to company towns, social networks now constitute an essential part of where public discourse happens, and I don't believe it would be too hard for Europe to make a case that public interest requires regulation and oversight.

shimonabi• 6 years ago

The EU would be the first to ban all discussion by its critics.

I'm paying taxes so that they can daily serve me Youtube and Twitter ads of how wonderful the EU is. I can't imagine such propaganda in the USA.

username903• 6 years ago

I can't imagine such propaganda in the USA.

In USA they still make most kids recite this every day in school:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance

anoncake3• 6 years ago

If the EU would like to do so, why hasn't it done so a long time ago?

jbjbjbjb• 6 years ago

Is it me or have we come full circle on this? I remember a not long ago when internet companies were told they were publishers and liable for their content and then Zuckerberg asking for more regulation. I can’t keep up.

mc325• 6 years ago

I think the EU understands the precedent this sets.

The tech giants have established that if they disagree with something (using their preferred value system), they feel they have the right to take action.

Let’s say the an EU minister proposes something that’s antithetical to US principles but is lawful in the EU, now tech giants feel emboldened with the right to take action _unilaterally_ without the right to an appeal.

I believe this is what the EU fears and wants to avoid.

op00to• 6 years ago

If the EU doesn’t like it, they should make their own platform. This isn’t a public park, we are talking about privately owned property.

mc325• 6 years ago

Sure but the EU, like China, like Russia are different jurisdictions with different laws. Their countries, their rules.

wolco52• 6 years ago

The point is to regulate social media for European citizens. They set the rules. If facebook or twitter cannot follow them they will pull out of that market allowing space for a local platform to take over.

rmsaksida• 6 years ago

If EU countries don't like it, they may also ban US tech companies as they're sovereign countries that don't need to bow to foreign corporations.

dcposch• 6 years ago

That is certainly what they're worried about.

Here's a less flattering angle on the same worry. Europe is caught pants-down. They are realizing how weak they are in tech and scrambling to fix it. The facts:

- None of the 20 most valuable companies in the world are European. Most are US or China based, and many are tech.

- A tiny number of successful startups are European. I think their biggest in the last 20 years is Spotify...

- This is a sad showing for a continent with a $20t GDP and 500 million citizens (EU + UK).

- Software is eating the world. This was a lukewarm take when pmarca wrote that famous essay a decade ago, now you could almost restate it past-tense.

Europe is simply not participating in that process meaningfully. Sure, there have been vast shifts in many aspects of life--Europeans spend just as much time on their iPhones as we do, on Twitter, no FB, on Insta, on Gmail. But they neither invented nor control the development of any of those things.

So yes, European world leaders are belatedly realizing that a guy in SF with a footlong beard could ban them from Twitter at will. But that is the tip of the iceberg. They have developed deep dependency on US tech in all kinds of ways. If GSuite or O365 went down tomorrow, how many EU governments would be able to get any work done?

This situation mirrors the (more extensively discussed) military situation. Europe has complacently decided that the US can manage it for them, and are now experiencing a rude awakening.

mc325• 6 years ago

I think the last part is a deep concern and if it’s not should be.

Google, Salesforce or Microsoft should not be able to wake up one day and say, you know what, I don’t like those people in Czechia, let’s cut their GSuite/O365 Access with no time to migrate.

These companies have too much heft and influence. And democratic governments have not caught up to that.

Authoritarians know the deal and that’s why they control them. They know how they can sway elections, not through ‘bots but via their algorithms and suppression or promotion of narratives as they see fit.

mrtksn2• 6 years ago

If EU doesn't have valuable companies and cannot produce valuable products how come that EU is not much different for living standarts than the US then? Is EU a petrostate? Where the money comes from if USA makes all the good stuff and EU none? From pumping out the Bulgarian crude or mining the Spanish rare earth metals?

The thing is, Europe missed out on the Software&Internet and the reality is, it is not the only tech or only high value product out there. However, software creates enormous monopolies, therefore when you do a top list USA has everything.

If you can look further than the toplists, Europe is doing strong on the long tail and that is how you got your 20T economy with no single unicorn in the charts.

Europe's biggest problem is its demographics - People are getting older and dying, not enough young people replace them. That's why it's percentage on the world economy is shrinking, it's not because Europeans can't code.

foofoo4u• 6 years ago

I have similar observations and concerns in regards to the United States’ overdependence on China as its supplier. I believe COVID-19 has revealed how dependent we are on China for even the most basic of supplies. America’s inability to domestically manufacture simple things such as masks is deeply worrisome. Think about it. We are unable to manufacture basic things at scale to fulfill basic needs of the country. We are no longer self-dependent. America’s generals have voiced concerns for years about how the majority of rare earth metals are derived from China. Metals of which are used in all of our sophisticated technology, such as computers, missiles, jets, satellites, etc. But COVID has revealed that these concerns span far greater than just technology and weapon systems. Similar to how the tech conglomerates can unilaterally erase the president of the United States in one fell swoop, China can also pull the rug from under us when it comes to supply chain. It’s a national security issue. We shouldn’t make ourselves so vulnerable.

PeterStuer2• 6 years ago

This is an entirely different issue. Europe can never compete within the 'western' sphere as long the US wil just gobble up every EU software company that threatens to become relevant with unlimited free petrodollars.

netheril96• 6 years ago

Be careful what you wish for. The Europeans might decide to import the GFW technology from China, and grow their own social media inside the new walled garden.

zmmmmm2• 6 years ago

It's hard to overlook that the political class is suddenly up in arms about this primarily because they suddenly perceive themselves as being under threat from it. Ordinary individuals and businesses have had to deal with the hegemony of the platforms for a long time and it hasn't really mattered until now.

I fear the outcome of this is going to be that it translates into massive regulatory overreach and splitting up of companies instead of what would be healthy - encourage competition through enforcing open standards and mandating interoperability and sharing of personal data. Those things would go a lot further to ensuring actual free speech as well as creating a healthier internet at the same time.

mc325• 6 years ago

I think one big issue is the federal trade commission has been too shy about fighting trusts or anti-competitive behavior because they believe(d) tech is different.

They allowed FB and Google to gobble up competitors unimpeded.

Amazon is another. Their integration and breadth are a threat to businesses and consumers alike but we’re too busy enjoying next day deliveries to care.

You ask for competition but these behemoths either buy them out or smother them via anti competitive behavior; at that point breaking them up is very palatable.

whimsicalism• 6 years ago

Even with anti-trust, I think the EU comission is probably correct that social media platforms may need more direct lines of contact with platform regulators in exchange for being larger players, just because of the intrinsic network effects that exist in the space.

NoOneNew2• 6 years ago

Agreed that regulatory overreach is on the horizon. Hell, pretty sure it's going to happen (or at least be full steam ahead) in the first 100 days of Biden's presidency. While I don't agree with sweeping regulatory practices and would like to see a thoughtful plan of trying to increase competition instead, I can't blame the political class' position. I find it even fascinating how far reaching this event has been and how anti-Trump politicians and organizations NOW finally see how dangerous Silicon Valley has become. In essence, Twitter went to war with the Office of President of the USA (not just Trump, but the position of USA president itself), right or wrong (I'm ignoring the moral/ethics going on for the sake of this debate, though, Trump did overstep his bounds... putting it mildly). This fact shows they can and will do it again and to lesser politicians.

"We took Trump's voice away, we can do it to you too. We pushed anti-Trump rhetoric and silenced pro-Trump rhetoric... do I need to replace Trump with your name if you don't do as we say?" If there is no fallout for Twitter, how far can they push it? What if Biden decides to do some policies that Twitter isn't in favor of? Does he get shut out too? The EU can see very well that the same thing can happen to them easily as well. Shit, even the ACLU threw an objection and concern over this and they hate Trump just as must as any other democrat. The big problem is, and you have to be fair, Trump put up a hell of a PR fight the past 4 years and did rather well up until the very end. Most politicians have crumbled from less pressure than what he experienced. Not many others will be able to hold out as long as he did. This extra weapon of social media and Silicon Valley taking down the public voice of politicians is really fucking dangerous, no matter the political spectrum. They're a handful of billionaires or near to billionaires who have direct control of what a large portion of the human population sees as fact and truth... and they have no one to oversight them.

zmmmmm2• 6 years ago

Agree.

It is actually disturbing in that it seems by implication that many politicians are portraying what Trump was doing as legitimate speech - and in doing so they are effectively legitimising it. Whereas anybody I am sure in the big tech decision making on this was treating this as "shouting fire in a theater" exception to speech. I think it will be very harmful if the "legitimate speech" interpretation becomes the dominant view - in that case we are effectively setting a precedent here that inciting a riot to overturn your own government is legitimate free speech.

osacial2• 6 years ago

In 2019 Court in NY in final instance denied Trump rights to ban twitter users(even the ones, that did not belong to US citizens) based on the The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is guaranteeing Free Speech.

I assume, that he was not allowed to ban people who were simply toxic and posted death threats - all the things that are considered norm in twitter(but other users are able to ban at least some of them to maintain healthy discussion). Also, it is not consistent with how just recently twitter allowed all those death wishes, when it was announced, that Trump had covid.

And I am even more curious about banning of other key Republican politicians - on what grounds? Were they also inciting violence?

bjustin• 6 years ago

Interoperability can make a market more consolidated than it otherwise might be. Look at how GitHub dominates the DVCS hosting market.

Ben Thompson's idea that social networks shouldn't be able to buy other social networks would be better IMO for avoiding problems like Facebook having too much power from also owning IG and WhatsApp. Not sure what a good solution would be for other companies such as Amazon having so much power.

corty• 6 years ago

The hypocrisy of the political class is even deeper, at least in Germany. Just recently, laws were passed to make platforms like Facebook filter, censor and rapidly delete content that might be against some law. Not after a court decision or at least an official order, no no, nothing so formal. A user complaint is sufficient to trigger the need to check within a few hours, have the platform decide to delete and report. No due process, nothing.

Penalties for insufficient reaction by the platform are steep and of course set after the fact. Therefore platforms will err on the side of caution and delete far more than they would have to.

And people like Merkel who are responsible for that law have the gall to complain when something their censorship law stipulated is done to a fellow politician...

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-germany-twitter/ge...

echelon2• 6 years ago

100%.

Germany is so wrong about this, and this is not the way we should go.

We Americans needs to grow thicker skin and cherish our free speech more. If we don't, we're going to slip into a world with less liberty.

Libel, slander, and "yelling fire" are sufficient limits on free speech. Seeing or hearing people say things you don't like isn't going to kill you. Society already has the tools to shun those who act egregiously.

We have other legal mechanisms to quell the events that happened last week. Prosecute for politicians inciting violence, fine trusted news organizations spreading misinformation, jail those who destroy property, trespass, or assault another person.

We have ways to stop radicalization too: being better to one another and making sure people have their needs met.

I vehemently disagree with Voat, Parler, thedonald.win, /r/sino, J. K. Rowling, and many other communities and persons. But they have a right to carry on, and we shouldn't deplatform them.

If we didn't have free speech, we wouldn't have gotten to where we are today. I'd rather live in America than a country that has less free speech.

tick_tock_tick• 6 years ago

I don't agree with her but her only argument is the government should make these calls rather then private companies. She probably even agrees with what they did just doesn't think anyone except the government should have that power.

zaarn• 6 years ago

There is a due process if the creator of whatever was complained about decides to do something about it.

Additionally, this is only a flagging process for plainly illegal content, it can (and is on FB and other platforms) be a separate process from normal reports.

RhodoYolo• 6 years ago

What would breaking them up even mean? I feel we would be in the same situation as brexit - How do we split them without collapsing all the pieces? You can point to microsoft but modern american has brought an entirely different, much larger, more entrenched behemoths than what we've seen.

gwright2• 6 years ago

I agree, in the sense that "break them up" seems to be an undefined action left as an exercise for the reader.

I'm not necessarily against reasonable regulations, but it is hard to agree or disagree if there is nothing on the table other than "break them up". Some specific framework or principle or proposal is needed to have any sort of a cogent discussion.

frombody• 6 years ago

This image doesn't cut things evenly, but illustrates the issue well.

https://mobile.twitter.com/finshots/status/12653067031861616...

shripadk5• 6 years ago

encourage competition through enforcing open standards

Big Tech destroyed this hope the moment it banned Parler and everyone cheered this ideological censorship.

Big Tech crossed every line in launching a coordinated attack on a rival. The damage this has done cannot be quantified. The ideal way to have gone about this is involvement of Courts/Legislature to decide if Parler should be banned or not. Not a group of private companies deciding to fuck a competitor. It is a horrible horrible precedent which has absolutely zero excuses.

Veedrac• 6 years ago

This comment doesn't make much sense given the announcement of the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act recently preceded this.

scotty79• 6 years ago

I wish they'd go after the money and regulate not just social networks but advertising business instead.

What adverts and next to what contents they can shown.

You could keep right to free speech but you don't have right to monetizing any speech.

illuminati1911• 6 years ago

Not too long ago there was an article on CNN about regulating the social media platforms. Author said: "It doesn't really matter whether these platforms are biased towards liberals or conservatives, the real question is why have we given them this power in the first place."

That was well said. Too bad after Biden's victory, CNN or no one on the democratic side cared about this anymore. Some surely do, but at least it's not being discussed anymore as much as before.

Lots of people ask "But Twitter is a private company, shouldn't they be allowed to do whatever they want with their platform?"

Well, unless we live in a complete anarcho-capitalism, no they should not. They need to follow the law and laws can be changed to match with the current situation.

The core issue is that Twitter, Facebook etc. are defacto information sources and platforms for most people on Earth. These companies are managed by radical leftists in Califonia and when they start to decide what information should be visible and what information should not be visible, they create an existential threat to democracies and societies all around the world as well as freedom of speech, politics, religion etc.

Government/Union regulation is not the solution either, but better than this.

dan-robertson2• 6 years ago

Let’s observe the rest of the quotation in the headline: ... key decisions alone “without any supervision, without any accountability, and without any sort of dialogue or transparency for the kind of decisions that they’re taking.”

I don’t know what the content of the bill in question is, though I would guess it is well meaning while somewhat missing the mark.

I don’t think the statement is particularly objectionable. I feel like dialogue and transparency and accountability are pretty good things to have. But maybe dialogue and accountability are really just ways for politicians to have these platforms bend to their will. To me, it still feels better than these issues being decided as part of @jack’s part-time journey of self discovery[1].

It seems to be less extreme than requirements that certain broadcasters produce balanced coverage or that banks do not decide loans based on protected characteristics.

I sympathise with the argument that private companies should be allowed to do what they like within the bounds of whatever contract they have with their users. But Twitter and Facebook position themselves as quasi-public spaces welcome to all, and I think if you’re going to act more like a (classical) forum, you might need to be treated by the law like one. In the U.K. if you set up a path open to the public across your back garden and leave it accessible for long enough and consistently enough then it will become a public right of way and you’ll have to keep it open and accessible.

[1] there’s two other arguments here: one is that it’s a savvy political calculation to reduce the threat of legislation from democrats. The other is that it’s due to growing pressure from employees. I think I’m not cynical enough to believe the first alternative—Twitter seemed to be trying to act in the public interest after it was obvious who would win Georgia and before putting trump in Twitter jail, and if they want to curry favour with the new regime, why not make it obvious? I find the second alternative quite compelling but this is countered by the relative inaction for the past 5 years and the fact that it seems these companies are rarely subjected to more employee pressure than seeing a few memes being made about how awfully they are behaving. But maybe Twitter employees saw Twitter as appropriately trying to act as a public forum and we’re satisfied with the status quo until the events in the capitol.

eudajmonia• 6 years ago

In an internet ruled world, were mass communication was now possible, existed a company who became so powerful that the product in which they developed was treated as important as a telephone, electricity, or the internet itself. As its power and influence grew, it aligned itself politically and ideologically. Those influences meant that individuals who expressed beliefs contrarian to those aligned with the organisation were met with digital ostracism. At first it was just normal individuals, but as time went on even world leaders were having their communications silenced or interfered with.

Those who were on the receiving end of this censorship were often forced to form alternative means of communication, but often it was the case that these powerful groups colluded to ensure this was not possible.

What does it mean when the only objective voice to comment on matters originating within the borders of the USA comes from outside of those borders.

Silicon Valley has become so powerful and moneyed that they believe they are supra government.

Tristan Harris comments that the laws that are designed to protect us, don't exist within the realms of social media.

mikkergp• 6 years ago

This is a mess. Something I just thought about, there’s been a lot of talk about the US regulating the social networks, but will there be first amendment issues if the US tries to create rules or laws for how social networks can regulate communication? Seems like it might be a catch 22

grej2• 6 years ago

There will absolutely be, but at least then restriction of speech in the public square will be driven by some sort of legal process. Not everything is subject to first amendment protections, and inciting riots clearly falls into the category that isn’t.

The danger is that almost any difficult decision has some kind of danger associated with it. Disagree with Covid restrictions ? Dangerous. Challenge the efficacy of a vaccine? Dangerous.

But I think we’d be better off if the decisions on takedowns and censorship of those positions were legislated in courts of law that yield clear guidance, not decided arbitrarily by a select few members of an oligopoly.

amai• 6 years ago

They should create state owned platforms for the public as a competition to the private ones. But instead they will just produce so many regulations that only the biggest companies can follow all these messy rules. This will in effect prevent any competition for the biggest companies by smaller companies making the situation worse for everyone.

julianmarq• 6 years ago

I'm not really surprised that governments (or similar, such as the EU) are starting to become suspicious of the issue that private companies—who primarily profit off their users' data—have somehow anointed themselves as arbiters of speech.

It should have happened sooner, really. Hopefully this leads into ways to foster innovation (such as with decentralized networks) and competition, to break these giants' monopolies on the flow of information.

EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

Related Stories