Censorship Industry: The European Firms Monetizing the DSA | Hacker News Reader

Censorship Industry: The European Firms Monetizing the DSA

foundationforfreedomonline.com

5 pointscubefox10 comments

What a polemic article.

"Eurocrats", really?

And the whole angle about American companies is weird as well. It doesn't matter where the company is from, if they operate in Europe, they have to follow European law.

Why should American companies be exempt from our laws? If they don't like them, they can get out of our market. Theres no special right to break our laws just because you're from America.

This article reeks of American exceptionalism... "But we should be able to do what we want because America #1!" No, our countries, our rules.

This is especially important given the hybrid warfare waged against us not just by Russia, but by the US as well [0]. In light of these attacks, moderation is more important than ever to safeguard our societies from campaigns by the newly globalized far right.

The fact that this organization is run by a former speech writer for Stephen Miller and current MAGA operative indicates the motives might be less than noble.

Lastly, the whole outrage about a compliance industry is also quite naive. Any regulation births a corresponding compliance industry.

[0] https://icds.ee/en/trump_silicon_valley_and_europes_far_righ...

For those Europeans believing in freedom of speech and in not selectively censoring one side of the political divide (you only seem to endorse censorship of the far right but not the far left) this is bad news. Your "us versus them" (United States versus Europe) framing obscures the actually relevant tension between censorship and no censorship in the EU.

I am not aware of any existing far-left threat in Europe. Should it come to that, we can discuss.

For now, it's a red herring and insisting an imaginary threat gets the same attention as an actually-existing one a clear sign of partisanship.

It's more likely that you only perceive far-right threats but no far-left threats because you are yourself left-wing. Right-wing people would have the opposite impression.

The AfD keeps gaining in polls, despite having been assessed as a far-right extremist by German security services.

The Italian government is lead by neofascists.

The US government - the world's most powerful state! - openly states they are supporting the far-right in Europe.

All over Europe, the far-right is gaining power.

Where's the far-left? Who's supporting them?

I would accept your premise if there were any empirical backing to it. From where I'm standing, I can only see whataboutism and a demand for equal treatment for unequal threats.

Well, right-wing people would say the far-left already has far more power in Europe than the far-right. For example, in tolerating the mass immigration from third-world countries with immigrants with far higher crime rate than the native population. Of course this probably doesn't look "far-left" to you, but that's likely simply because you are yourself left-wing. But a large fraction of average people, even many left-wing people a few decades ago, or people from countries like Japan or Switzerland, would disagree with you.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the left wing. Check the parties in power that do those immigration policies you're unhappy with. They're all center-right.

Look at the German government. CDU, center right.

Look at the EU Parliament: Right-wing majority.

Look at the Commission President: EPP, center-right.

A far-left party would call for redistribution, communal ownership of the means of production or nationalization of industries. None of that has any majority backing in any EU state. Funnily enough, they would most likely agree with you on limiting immigration because they see it as a tool by capital to hurt the working class by driving down wages and undermining labor organization.

You count as "far-left" basically only communism, but as far-right parties that want to more strongly restrict third-world immigration than current center parties. Those are very one-sided standards. If you only classify communism as far-left, then you could only classify Nazism as far-right. Then the AfD would not qualify as "far-right".

That's what far-left is...

And that's also what far-right is, and yes, the AfD qualifies.

Again, I think that's an extremely biased view that only someone who is very left-wing could accept. It would mean even left-wing people from a few decades ago, or countries like Japan or Switzerland, would count as "far right".

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