Hacker News Reader

Comment by olouv | Hacker News Reader

This link https://www.nextinpact.com/article/45417/plateformes-et-mote... gives a bit more insight into this "rush" to transcribe a possible future EU law into national law.

It looks like the French government want to leverage the Trump/conservatives global de-platforming to push for new regulation on the US web super giants.

Interestingly, both French ministers (economy and digital) severely condemned the "unilateral" and "oligarchic" decision to de-platform Tump and conservatives. Pointing the lack of "judiciary or democratic supervision".

I think it is a smart move, Europe should clearly push for a sovereign alternative for these global-scale utility-like medium of communication. There is too much at stake.

View on HN

They just have to mandate turning of the Like Count (and other half baked signaling). Things will revert to the old internet.

What now ?!?, since one or two years, the EU forced social network to remove problematic content in less then 24 hours.

EU forced social network to remove problematic content in less then 24 hours.

They're in no way against censoring speech. They just want courts and governments to hold the monopoly over censoring speech.

It's verbatim what Belgium 's prime minister recently said."It's not up to Twitter or Facebook to decide what can be said or not. It's up to judges.".

> Interestingly, both French ministers (economy and digital) severely condemned the "unilateral" and "oligarchic" decision to de-platform Tump and conservatives. Pointing the lack of "judiciary or democratic supervision".

They are afraid that eventually, Twitter or Facebook is going to remove their conservative speech, if it rubs Twitter or Facebook employees the wrong way, and they'd be right. That's exactly what is going to happen.

But I'd argue, why are they still flocking to thus promoting these platforms at first place? Promote open techs, open protocols so that anybody with any client can subscribe to their messages without being forced to go on Twitter and co... it exists, it's called RSS, ActivePub... the tools of freedom are here and they don't take much effort at all.

edit: I feel like people are missing my point or maybe I didn't expressed it very well. Twitter and Facebook should be entitled to ban whomever they want on their platform, that's not the point. The point is governments and politicians should start promoting open protocols and technologies for communication instead of voting law for fear of getting their 'conservative' speech banned by these platforms they decided to speak on, often exclusively. That's all I'm saying.

>They are afraid that eventually, Twitter or Facebook is going to remove their conservative speech

Have they (and who are they? The ministers? Every Frenchmen alive?) said this themselves or are you spreading FUD?

Censoring speech is "removing something he said". France and Germany are for this. Censoring people is "removing a person because of what he said". France and Germany are both against this. Of course Facebook and Twitter take the easy way out instead of the ethical one.

is going to remove their conservative speech

No has ever been kicked off Twitter for claiming that their left wing opponent's tax plan will have unintended consequences that can lead to long term slowdown of GDP growth or that a minimum wage increase will lead to higher unemployment.

> Twitter or Facebook is going to remove their conservative speech, if it rubs Twitter or Facebook employees the wrong way

It's not what happened and it has nothing to do with Facebook or twitter employees (who have almost zero power, they haven't even unionized yet!).

Facebook or Twitter could have banned Trump & al. for content policy violation years ago (and they probably should have actually, because you know, policy violation) but they did not because conservatives were in charge and then had power to retaliate. Now they are banning them now, because now the democrats are in charge, and they are definitely going to retaliate hadn't social network ban Trump.

American social networks will do things which don't annoy the American government too much, so it leave them alone. What's happening here, is European govts wanting the same level of power than the US one.

Facebook and Twitter employees have plenty of power when it comes to banning accounts with speech they don't like.

Why does the polish government intend on doing the following then?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/14/poland-plans-t...

Oh that's easy.

The Polish government (like most authoritarian governments) wants sole control over who has censorship authority. [0][1][2]

Also: You're conflating "speech they don't like" with "policy violating conduct" which IS legally enforceable in most countries, including Poland.

As usual: Don't like it? Go somewhere else. Just not Parler, they couldn't host a piss up at a brewery.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/poland-courts-warsaw-2dece52da1fa...

[1] https://ipi.media/as-violence-escalates-in-poland-journalist...

[2] https://ipi.media/alerts/polish-journalist-arrested-while-co...

First, [Redacted, since the parent comment has since been edited].

Second, Facebook and Twitter are banning hundreds of pages every month, extremists pages indeed, but sometimes also journalists or parody pages, most of these bans being done by bots, with a degree of false positive and with often little ways to react.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com