Social media riot shutdowns possible under EU content law, top official says | Hacker News Reader

Social media riot shutdowns possible under EU content law, top official says

politico.eu

44 pointswalterbell57 comments

- "Some critics likened this to measures seen in authoritarian states like China and Iran."

To distinguish the actions you would need a magnifying glass and a thesaurus.

(Which any number of pundits are about to dust off from their bookshelves. Because: moral valence flows from the actor to the action. Obviously the authoritarian regimes oppress their people; obviously the free democracies protect their peoples' freedom and security. It takes conscious effort to reverse the causal order—to judge the actor by their actions, not re-interpret the actions on the fly to the fit the actor).

Equating everything to China or middle eastern countries is the 2023 equivalent of equating everything to Hitler.

This is bad but not yet _that_ bad. I have to say though, EU legislature in recent years is on a very slippery slope.

I don't think viewing the nation with the "Great Firewall" as a polemic in this debate is anywhere near such equivocations.

That's kind of the point I was going for in my (post-edit) comment. EU countries are broadly very free countries, totally and qualitatively unlike the authoritarian exemplars. The threat of shutting down social media to quench anti-government protests, specifically, is very, very like parallel examples from repressive dictatorships. It's a thought-terminating cliche to erase this second observation by overwriting it with the first.

Can't trust the people to be able to speak to each other.

People will get hurt if they have to think for themselves.

If the people are revolting it is definitely illegitimate on their part, our dear leaders are infallible in their efforts to do what's best for them.

How far our 'leaders' have fallen.

It is clear that misleaders are currently in power.

Or maybe it is just "A person is smart, people are stupid", "Broken window theory", etc.

Great living in the EU:

-Economy become stagnant (EU economy was 10% larger than the US economy in 2005; in 2022, US economy was 40% larger than the EU's)

-Ever increasing power centralization into Brussels with all kinds of fun instruments like joint debt

-Censorship laws coming up

Nothing can convince me the end result won't be something akin to the Soviet Union. All the right mechanisms are creeping into place

I think you're exaggerating with the Soviet Union comparison. But yeah, the economy and jobs market is pretty stagnant. What's not stagnant is the housing market. We're gonna be like Canada soon.

> EU economy was 10% larger than the US economy in 2005; in 2022, US economy was 40% larger than the EU's

How much of that is due to the UK leaving?

seems unlikely to be a significant amount - given https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/germany/uk

on edit: actually thinking about it, since Germany is about 21% of economy and England is slightly under Germany I guess England could be responsible for a significant amount of that loss - assuming significance is more than 15% of the loss.

yes, it was a big amount, and it affected all the stats.

The stats were poor (behind the US) even before Brexit

yup, agree. and the stats are still poor.

i don’t see any solution to this problem, and it doesn’t seem like the politicians and/or the public care.

The UK leaving the EU is seen as a UK failure (because brexit affected the UK much); but them leaving the EU is a EU failure because one of the members of the union has left. People underestimate this fact a lot.

How would have the EU prevented this when the Leave camp was fueled by lies, such as the famous NHS budget bus and all the various Euromyths that the UK press liked to conjure? It's not like people didn't try debunking them.

i remember someone from the EU saying something like: they did not do anything to campaign for the continuation of membership.

Can you cite those statements?

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?contextu... [2] https://www.2021portugal.eu/en/news/first-european-debt-issu... [3] this post

Are those GDP figures inflation adjusted?

I have no idea how those metrics are calcupated, but by selecting "international USD" (whatever that means...), the US and EU are basically on par... Seems almost like economics are too complex a topic to easily compare in an online comment.

>"international USD" (whatever that means...)

International dollar means normalizing everything to the US dollar as of 1990. So the answer to Chucknorris89's question is "Yes".

GDP is actually the easiest, most apples-to-aples thing to compare, I don't know why you're saying it's too complex. And the graph clearly shows the EU falling behind the US, both in nominal $ and in GDP per capita.

Here's another source. https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-eu-econ...

Still better than living in the USA. Source: have done both long term.

You forgot socialized healthcare

Not sure what you mean with this

comparisons between EU and US economy seem unfair if leaving out well known things that impact economy such as health care costs, that said since the socialized healthcare is not on an EU level but on a national level it might make sense not to put that comparison in.

That highly depends on what country in Europe you live in.

In poorer countries waiting lists on stuff like MRI can be up to two years, debilitating surgery procedures in 6 months, etc.

People talk about EU and just talk about best parts. Inequality between EU countries is greater than US states.

Most social systems are already breaking down due to increased costs, increased burdens and bad privatization, all of which are predicted to increase. Several countries are already pushing the burden back on younger individuals as a way to keep the boomer and older millennial voters happy. Meanwhile, the things named by GP are likely to increase, as well.

It's not the gotcha it was 10 years ago.

A quick search showed the EU and the US being, more or less, on par when ot comes to GDP and such. Not sure where you got your numbers from. Also, not sure what any of this has to do with shutting down Social Media in some situations.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?contextu...

'(EU economy was 10% larger than the US economy in 2005; in 2022, US economy was 40% larger than the EU's)'

How is this measured? If I can print money without any consequences because I am the world reserve currency, and I decide after 2008 to go berserk on that, would my GDP grow without basically changing anything in the real economie?

GDP is a bit trickier than that, and exports are much harder to fabricate. Printing money clearly has its limits even for the USD (they can see the inflation now and the limits of it).

Can't I just buy my revenue streams with my monopoly money, and would those than count as my exports?

You'll need to export to a certain country, as far as I understand it. What countries usually do, is that they'll lend with their monopoly money while limiting the debit countries to purchase from them.

You can think of that as export-boosting but not completely fake exports.

What i've seen frequently is US investors buying EU companies that hold promise. So later it is a 'US' company and the narrative stays 'EU is great at basic research, but they suck at bringing it to market', but how can you beat free money?

I think you are right on this. Being the world's reserve currency, US can swap their printed money with real assets (in this case, companies, metals, grains, etc), thereby these companies bought with USD becoming American. If USD ceases being the world reserve currency, the dollar value can fall by 35% or more. In a way, the world (esp exporters, exporters who force importers to pay in USD) subsidizes US indirectly. Yet no one talks about this malaise, and the costs borne out by the the rest of the world. That's why the debates in US is always about why not print money to fiscal spending (for the ordinary people), as the cronies of capitalists have been printing money (or by suppressing interest rates, and by QE policies) to help the capitalist class and their elite servant class (managers, media, think tanks, etc).

> -Economy become stagnant (EU economy was 10% larger than the US economy in 2005; in 2022, US economy was 40% larger than the EU's)

confirmed by this world bank chart:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...

the biggest econ problem in the EU is that some countries are still either below or have similar GDP to 2008’s GFC:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...

> In 2008 the EU’s economy was somewhat larger than America’s: $16.2 trillion versus $14.7 trillion. By 2022, the US economy had grown to $25 trillion, whereas the EU and the UK together had only reached $19.8 trillion. America’s economy is now nearly one-third bigger. It is more than 50 per cent larger than the EU without the UK.

from https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-art-of-vassalisation-how-rus...

Yeah lets break down EU and then start a limiteless number of wars as Europe was before EU.

Cause the alternative is centralization under a parliament in Brusells. Is that something that you really equal to Soviet Union?

>Social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat will face possible shutdowns when they don't crack down on problematic content

Ok, and who defines what exactly is "problematic content"? Let me guess, it's gonna be whatever the government wants silenced.

>"When there is hateful content, content that calls – for example – for revolt, that also calls for killing and burning of cars, they will be required to delete [the content] immediately,"

Aha, but if I invite 100k people to a meeting in the city center next to the parliament building for a peaceful protest, that will be fine and not get removed, right? Right?

An optimistic view would be that courts decide what is right and wrong. They are supposed to be independent of both the government and the parliament, and if you fear a dystopian future where they aren't, shutting down TikTok isn't going to be our biggest problem.

I don't get your comment. The police can come break up mass gatherings without consulting with the courts first.

Laws vary a bit from country to country in Europe, but here in Sweden at least the cops have to protect the safety of the people in the mass gatherings, safeguarding their right to protest/demonstrate/whatever.

This system has really been put to the test lately when some right wing extremists wanted to burn the Quran outside of mosques. The police really didn't want to allow that, but were in the end forced to protect the demonstrations, since even boneheaded Nazis have freedom of speech here, no matter how dumb and inflammatory their speech is.

This has really caused some diplomatic problems for the government, who are trying to convince Turkey (a predominantly Muslim country) to allow us to join NATO. Burning the Quran and angering every Muslim in the world has not helped that cause.

Now it seems burning stuff is becoming a trend, the other day someone made the news for burning a printout of their municipalities traffic guidelines, which was kinda funny.

Given how much the government and the police wanted to stop these things, and yet still ended up helping them happen(in accordance to Swedish constitution) makes me not worry overmuch that Europe will become Soviet.

Unless Russia conquers us all, then we'll be the Soviet Union for sure.

I think it's mistaken to compare the two rather than seeing one as an extension of the other. Police already have the tools and authority to police an active riot into submission. The decision to go easy on riots is a political one motivated by a desire not to jeopardize their current powers. This doesn't mean expanding their powers is necessary or desirable even if the courts are involved however.

You’d be surprised that if you show pornography or gore porn in public, the police can and will take you down in the US too without a court order.

So what defines problematic content? The law.

"Uneven application of the law" is generally what people seem to have issues with.

That’s exactly what is being addressed. The uneven application in virtual space vs meat space.

Well, it doesn't seem to be applied evenly in meat space yet either. ;)

I don't understand how you can question this, are you trying to stop our government from being able to fight right-wing Russian misinformation trolls? With attitudes like that, Ukraine will lose.

Upvotes to the left, folks.

Ah yes, the invisible boogieman, Russian online trolls, the reason we should all give up our rights, "for your safety". "but think of the children".

So the solution to massive social unrest is to get people to stop talking about it? Just pretend it is not happening and everything is going to be fine.

Going after the symptoms rather than the causes.

Our leaders are so narcissistic and think so high of themself and low of us that they can't fathom that any discontent from their subjects are real and not some manufactured discontent from the whatever country they happen to war monger against.

That said social media is toxic and I am quite sure Facebook and Twitter have manipulated the feeds to incite discontent in countries that is on the Washington shit list. When they shut down social media it was seen as an attack on democracy ...

This is unacceptable. Taking basic rights away from people

https://archive.is/dLVPW

Hahaha, when third world countries suppress social media, NGOs, USAID, the West bemoans the fact that liberal values of the hour (freedom, suppression of minorities, independent media, etc) are suppressed. When it comes to the West, blame it on "disinformation campaign by Russia/China, election interference, public interest being suppressed, etc". At least in the third world, ordinary people know that freedom depends on the enforcers of the state machinery, and they don't cite constitution or statues or liberal values. Enter the West: it is a different game.

Most patriots would support this move. Remember that foreign agents of hostile powers can infiltrate social media platforms and agitate the public into revolt. In fact, this was official US / big tech policy during the Arab Spring, leading the Syrian Civil War amongst other catastrophes. We would do best to prevent the same techniques applied by others, to us

>Most patriots would support this move.

Ah, the modern 'No true Scotsman (2001 RIP)'.

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