Closure of Twitter Brussels office prompts online safety fears
ft.com
ft.com
Most U.S. Big Tech companies have willingly set-up shop in Europe, but with increasingly acrimonious legislation putting them in the cross-hairs I wouldn't be surprised if someone like Musk tests if he can get away with merely operating from U.S. soil and ignoring EU legislation.
The Cookie Banner is one example. Most U.S. websites detect European users and show the pop-up accordingly. IMHO a U.S. web-based newspaper or site shouldn't have to do this as long as all its servers are U.S.-based.
> EU To Warn Twitter And Facebook To Stick To Rules
> The social media giants' EU operations are based in Ireland, and Brussels is worried that a wave of job losses will undermine their content moderation and data protection standards.
> But there are concerns in Brussels that Musk's libertarian free speech stance -- and the gutting of Twitter's staff -- will undermine efforts to stamp out propaganda, hate speech and harassment.
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A) This Brussels office is not Twitter's only, or even main, presence in the EU. So this probably isn't a "fine I'll just leave" thing.
B) This comes in the middle of a spat about whether Twitter is actually allowed to stop censoring things. The FT article sounds like this was probably the office responsible for coordinating Twitter's censorship policies with government policy makers?
> local Twitter executives who had key positions to deal with government officials
> the EU’s vice-president in charge of the disinformation code
Imagine thinking these are good and the changes are bad. Never let anyone tell you we have free speech in europe.
Do you have examples of when those laws have silenced a citizen from speaking their mind where it wouldn't cause damages to a minority or just other people in general? Because I'm fully onboard in not allowing Nazi-speech be spread around, it infects the mind of the fearful and tolerating it has been shown to not work.
The past 3 years have been rife with disinformation. Mask don't work, then they do, then they don't. The vaccine is 99% effective, then you need a booster, then you need a 2nd booster. If you get the vaccine you won't get Wuhan Pneumonia, then you do get it. The virus was definitely not made in a lab in Wuhan, then maybe it was, then maybe "we'll never know".
If you disagreed with the government line then you got censored by "private companies" collaborating with govt agents. If you gathered with others to disagree then the government would silence you with force. If you traveled more than 1km from your home the government would tax you 1500.
If the government had had enough security apparatus they would have done what we see in China. Locking people in Ikea, in an iPhone factory, in their homes.
Furthermore I noticed you jumped straight to that from "disinformation". I wonder if I should read anything into that. Better not.
Shortly after the end of WW2, he came to this conclusion:
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
[...]
> We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
Personally, I agree with this logic. Uncurtailed freedom only works as long as people don't use it to curtail the freedoms of others and that sort of abuse has to be stopped in the interest of freedom.
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
Hard to describe posting awful garbage on twitter as "[forbidding] their followers to listen to rational argument" or answering those arguments "by the use of their fists or pistols". One might make the argument that it isn't "[meeting] us on the level of rational argument", but one could easily make the argument that all of twitter by it's very nature of tossing bumpersticker sized sound bites over the walls at each other isn't anything remotely approacing "rational argument".
For example, reasonable people may view anyone who disagrees with same sex marriage as intolerant.
Those same reasonable people may also agree with your point above.
The result? Suppression of speech about a controversial political process, and the weakening of the democratic process.
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/11/21/libs-of-tiktok-colorad...
Speech isn't some high minded abstract thing, it has real life consequences and the kind of speech that gets people killed needs to be suppressed.
Of course, we need not reason about or think about the atrocities that have resulted from government controlled media and speech - according to your point, we're supposed to infer that somehow maybe if we just controlled speech more this awful thing wouldn't have happened.
Nevermind that the shooter was apparently non-binary, suffered awful abuse, was bullied and severely disturbed... No the solution is to limit that pesky free speech. Then everything will be fine?
Oh, and also the link you posted doesn't in any way represent what you claim it did. Nothing in there celebrated the shooting, that link discusses "libs of TikTok" account criticizing an organization that promotes drag performing to children. Poor timing, sure... But not exactly the smoking gun excuse to limit freedom of expression that you suggest it is.
Nobody* wants incitements to actual crimes on twitter.
Nobody* wants "freedom" to post racial slurs on twitter. That shits get's even censored on "patriots.win" which is the successor of reddit/r/the_donald
People concerned about online censorship worry about these issues among other:
* conservative rappers getting banned for saying "okay dude" while lefty checkmarks can freely post violent fantasies about their political opponents.
* Alexander Berenson and probably others being banned on behalf of the US government
https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-becomes-a-tool-of-gover...
* people getting arrested in the UK because "anti-LGBTQ social media post 'caused anxiety'"
* people getting arrested for posts that are just political speech now in Germany, Austrialia, Sweden all over really
* people getting banned / demonetized on Youtube for not following the party line on COVID even if they discuss peer reviewed studies and official data
Let's not pretend the current free speech debate is about empowering racists to say the N-word more.
* of course there is always a few nuts
Not sure how that is supposed to be undemocratic.
Putting on my cynical hat, I could imagine powerful interests using this opportunity to consolidate their power and silence their opposition under the guide of "prevention mis/dis/malinformation" - it's a slippery slope which is easy to abuse if not careful in our approach. This is what I meant by "so much for democracy". I very much hope I'm wrong :)
A powerful monopoly can do the same thing, and you don’t get to vote on their board. Why is that any less dangerous?
Yikes... so much for democracy.
Given that twitter has a large presence in EU, leaving doesn't seem viable so they will probably pay the fine.
That would then prevent Twitter from charging customers in those geographies (whether those customers are advertisers or users). And given the EU economy is one of the largest in the world, that could seriously impede Twitter's revenue potential.
Governments are supposed to do regulatory action and not partnerships. I rather have democratic laws (even with the minor power individual citizens has in EU), than governments officials being in control of content moderation at a public platform.
Here in Sweden we have a long standing political guideline when it come to politicians and media/news/culture/free speech. Politician should keep a minimum arm-length distance so to not enter temptation of controlling those part of society.
Partnership in this context is also a bit weird. The EU commission does not have a police force nor do they enforce the law. The commission role is draft legislation, arbitrate in the legislative process, engage in trade negotiations, and draw up the budget of the European Union.
This is a very American view of politics, and this view is certainly not shared by every human on Earth. Europeans voted for such governments, along with all the benefits and drawbacks.
Being able to choose governments that align with their ideals is democracy.
We got 21 votes in a 705 member parliament, but this article is about the European Commission and not the European Parliament. The commission is appointed from each member state, but those appointed are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. It operate as the cabinet government of the European union rather than elected representatives of each country.
Thus the relation to Europeans votes are a bit more disconnected with the commission compared to the parliament. It also the commission that draws most criticism. The biggest being transparency as as the commission is not held to the same democratic rules as parliament. A EU regulation by its nature must be transparent, while the operation of the commission often is not.
Wikipedia has a sub article on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_E...
WP quote: "One assertion of democratic illegitimacy focuses on the role of the European Commission as a non elected institution being the only entity (with some few exceptions) initiating legislation."
Two remaining Brussels executives left last week after Musk asked staff to commit to a "hardcore working culture"; it's unclear whether they resigned or were fired.
The article quotes the EU's vice-president in charge of the disinformation code as saying she is "concerned" about Twitter's future ability to "detect and take action against disinformation and propaganda ... Especially in the context of Russian disinformation warfare, I expect Twitter to fully respect the EU law and honour its commitments. Twitter has been a very useful partner in the fight against disinformation and illegal hate speech and this must not change."
The article adds that advertisers are also worried.
Taking a look at the actual data[2], hate speech has decreased.
>Elon Musk has said he's about context on tweets, so here's context for these shirts: They came from Twitter's Black employee resource group and were popularized by @jack, who wore a version around to conferences to support the group (and was sometimes ridiculed for it).