It's not censorship. It's democratic self-defense

https://civiceconomist.substack.com/p/its-not-censorship-its-democratic

by ggirelli • 8 months ago

18 12 8 months ago

civiceconomist.substack.com

throwfaraway135• 8 months ago

Although Twitter/X is far from perfect, I think credit should be given when it's due. They have:

* Community notes

* Organization/Person verification

* And now visible locations

All of which are much more than you have in other places like Reddit or Instagram. Is there a lot more you can do? Probably yes.

jack_tripper4• 8 months ago

Sorry, but speaking as an Elon disliking European, if your democracy can be so easily hacked just by a blue checkmark then your democracy was super weak and vulnerable to begin with and you have way bigger issues and attack vectors to worry about. That's like complaining about other actors finding and exploiting the backdoors you intentionally put in your system that you used to exploit before. That's your own self inflicted problem, that now has been exposed and the problem is with you not with the ones who found it. So build a stronger democracy with no backdoors.

Sure, Elon is a certified schizo, but labeling everyone who points out issues with the EU leadership policies as "trolls", "far right", "MAGA" and "Putin supporters" to discredit opinions they don't like, only causes further contempt, and adding censorship to "protect democracy", doesn't fix the structural issues of your democracy which stem from the lack of trust and disappointment the voters have in their leaders and their policies from the last ~10 years, not from X and its blue checkmarks which only serves as a convenient scapegoat to dodge accountability.

X is just one of the few unmoderated escape valves people have left to vent their frustrations without fear of speech censorship or repercussions, and instead of leaders treating it as an option poll or pulse of the nation to know where the displeasure of their voters lie, they do exactly the opposite of what people there say, and then are shocked at elections why people get even angrier and start voting more extreme right/left in retaliation.

Oh, and the major hypocrisy that gives X a lot of weight despite its issues, is that when the free sharing of information on Twitter led to the 2011 Arab Spring regimes topplings despite those regimes trying to stop Twitter, GSM and internet access, it was championed as a victory for free speech by the west, but when the tables turn and the same free sharing of information on X leads to exposure of corruption, cronyism and lies of western governments and mainstream media, then now X is the problem and we get attempts of Chat-Control and Age-ID for our internet access. Huh, aint that sus how what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander.

So as that old saying goes, if you cut a man's tongue, you're not convincing people he's a liar, you're convincing them that you're afraid of what he has to say. Just to be clear, by "man" here I mean X and social media in general, not Elon, that guy's nuts.

demarq• 8 months ago

Worse still, EU isn’t actually a democracy. It’s an economic union. Which citizens voted for Vonderleyen? What power do EU citizens have over policies tabled in EU parliament? Who made the final choice on chat control?

Autocracy is what threatens EU democracy, not a check mark on a social media website.

So I don’t get called a Pro-Elon shill, I don’t like Elon, and think he is an ass. But he has done (maybe unwittingly) more for democracy on social media than his counterparts.

EDIT: Community notes might have been before Elon. So he only gets a half credit.

potato3732842• 8 months ago

Autocracy is what threatens EU democracy, not a check mark on a social media website.

This. The government diverges from the will of the people, the government structures itself to resist the people changing it to reflect their will, the people become more likely to say "f this" and so something drastic. This isn't a new pattern or even unique to democracy. The 1790s French professional managerial class lost their heads this way.

rightbyte• 8 months ago

I think it is jingoism you are noticing.

jack_tripper4• 8 months ago

Huh? Can you explain in detail what you mean by this?

throwaway918272• 8 months ago

How do you square your directive that leaders use X as a way to get an option poll or pulse of a nation with phenomena like this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/23/rightwing-in...

where a huge amount of influential accounts posing as American patriots were actually essentially content-farmers from the global south?

For my 2 cents, I consider X in 2025 (which is very different from Twitter in 2011!) to be basically an anonymous imageboard like 4Chan, mostly full of straight-up noise and largely decoupled from reality, with the only reliable signal being a bias towards information that is personally flattering or aligned with Elon Musk.

I don't know that I'd ever seriously listen to a place like 4Chan for guidance about how to tie my own shoes, much less how to govern an entire nation.

jack_tripper4• 8 months ago

influential accounts posing as American patriots were actually essentially content-farmers from the global south?

Which is why I'd like a button that allows me to geofence the global south from posting on my social media feeds. Their opinions are irrelevant anyway to the political issues happening in my EU country since they're not citizens and can't vote in the elections here, so there's no loss there, same how I'm not gonna go on Indian social media boards and lecture them about how to solve the conflict with Pakistan because it doesn't concern me.

Like for example a popular blogger from my country solved this issue by paywalling his blog behind a 5 Euro monthly Patreon fee. Suddenly, no more bots, trolls, low quality rage baiters and Asian scammers. Gatekeeping is important if you want to maintain quality and don't have massive resources for moderation.

Also this isn't anything new. Spying, botting and farming on the internet aka information warfare in general, has been happening for 50+ years now. We're now just more aware of it because now "others" are doing it to "us", when in the past it was mostly "we" who were doing it to "them".

I don't know that I'd ever seriously listen to a place like 4Chan for guidance about how to tie my own shoes, much less how to govern an entire nation.

[...]mostly full of straight-up noise and largely decoupled from reality

If it's so decoupled from reality, then how come both X and 4Chan were bang on about how Trump was gonna win the US presidential election both times, despite mainstream media telling otherwise from their "polls" as sources?

You can chose not to listen to X and 4Chan the same way how you can choose to piss against the wind, but then don't be surprised you end up getting wet and covered in piss.

qcnguy• 8 months ago

You would notice that X responded to concerns over such accounts directly, without being forced to do anything by the EU and in a much more sensible way than what the EU is demanding.

plastic-enjoyer• 8 months ago

This article is AI slop

It's not censorship. It's democratic self-defense

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