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'No longer acceptable' for platforms to take key decisions alone, EU Commission says
It is "no longer acceptable" for social media giants to take key decisions on online content removals alone, following the high profile takedowns of US President Trump's accounts on Facebook and Twitter, the European Commission has said.
Trump's accounts have been suspended by the two platforms for inciting calls to violence ahead of the violent riots that hit Washington's Capitol Hill last week.
Speaking to lawmakers on Monday (11 January), Prabhat Agarwal, an official who heads up the eCommerce unit at the European Commission's DG Connect, noted how the EU executive's Digital Services Act attempts to realign the balance between effective content removal and preserving freedom of expression online.
"It is no longer acceptable in our view that platforms take some key decisions by themselves alone without any supervision, without any accountability, and without any sort of dialogue or transparency for the kind of decisions that they're taking," Agarwal said.
"Freedom of expression is really a key value in this," he told the European Parliament's internal market committee.
The comments came following concerns raised by some lawmakers in the European Parliament following the suspension of Trump's social media accounts. In doing so, platforms giants had demonstrated that they yield a disproportionate degree of power over the freedom of speech online.
"The fact that platforms like Twitter and Facebook decide who can speak freely is dangerous," Green MEP Kim van Sparrentak said.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Aegis on Friday January 15 2021, @03:13PM (12 children)
Except they actually did try to burn it all down last week due to Trump's recklessness.
The pedo lizard people, on the other hand, don't exist.
This isn't "both sides." This is one side that has completely divorced itself from reality and the other side being worried about it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday January 15 2021, @03:49PM (8 children)
Trump is a fruitcake - even many of his supporters agree with that. What the rest of the US seems to be missing, is this: Trump isn't the problem. Trump is the symptom. The real problem: half of the population believes that the US government, and the political inner circle that runs it, is corrupt. Trump was elected, not because he was a decent candidate, but because he was the only candidate who wasn't a member of that political inner circle.
- If you believe that the government as a whole, and the political elite in particular, are not corrupt, you need to prove that to the other half the country.
- If you agree that they are corrupt, that there is a "swamp", then you need to fix it.
The current impeachment frenzy is just that inner circle avenging themselves. If Trump were actually to run again in 2024, and be elected again: see above. He's not the problem; the reasons for his election are the problem.
I don't envy you guys, trying to sort this out.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday January 15 2021, @04:10PM (3 children)
One major hole in your thesis.
Trump promised to drain the swamp.
He became part of the swamp. Corruption? Yep. Trump. Corruption at least as bad as anything I've ever seen. And far more brazen and out in the open about it. And his supporters defending his corruption! Trump saw the presidency as primarily a way to benefit his personal businesses. Hid his taxes. Would not effectively divest himself. So please don't mention corruption as your central thesis and people not liking it. They loved it!
C'mon in! The swamp's just fine!
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday January 15 2021, @04:18PM (2 children)
But he did drain the swamp, turns out when you drain a swamp you get left with a big hole to fill, so he filled it with his own muck, I mean you gotta fill it with something...
Same size & location of swamp, but if you dip your finger in and taste it, the flavour of the s**t has changed slightly.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2021, @07:27PM (1 child)
No he definitely made the swamp bigger AND worse. More and worse corruption.
Like we've been saying, conservatives can be forgiven for voting for Trump the first time, but if they voted for him a 2nd time or supported him after his first year or two then they are evil or stupidly ignorant. I blame Fox News and the attending propaganda machines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @07:48PM
"I blame Fox News and the attending propaganda machines."
Fox is controlled by the same international Jews that run the rest of the media. That's why they push vaccines and worked against Trump in the election. Trump may have been a honeypot/psyop the whole time anyways. Gotta keep whitey paying federal taxes while he is invaded with brown people via Jew/Christian(Goi lap dogs) churches and NGOs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 15 2021, @04:23PM (2 children)
That "half of the population" is probably way off. If you are presuming that all Trump voters believe government is corrupt, that's OK, you're probably close to right. There are also those who voted D, who believe government is corrupt, but preferred D corruption to Trump corruption. Then, you've got all those non-voters, some of whom have voiced opinions that government is corrupt, and they don't want to participate in the corruption.
Any decent survey (non-partisan, and without any agenda to push) would probably reveal that well over 60% of Americans believe government is corrupt. Do I hear 80%?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by helel on Saturday January 16 2021, @04:04AM (1 child)
In my experience offline probably half of Democrats think the government is horrifically corrupt and the other half only think it's corrupt when under Republican control and the same is true of Republicans, in reverse. Ignoring the non-voters that gives us about 75% of the population at any given time. Everyone I know who votes third party or is willing to admit to not voting at all agrees the government is always corrupt.
So, in my unscientific polling I'd definitely say the number is around 85-90% of the population sees corruption at any one time, possibly more or less around elections while those optimistic about their party update their views.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 16 2021, @04:14PM
For the short term gain of 'keeping a democrat/republican out' rather than voting for the long term policies they want and eroding the political clout of both the democrats and republicans for longer term gains and actual political change. Instead they are counterintuitively throwing away their votes by voting for a candidate more likely to win.
I've been voting 3rd party for over 20 years now. Usually Green for the presidency, although this last election I voted Libertarian (The replacement for Stein had even more nut-jobby policies, and out of the four top candidates the Libertarian one looked best, even though about a quarter of the policies I disagreed with, none of them were in key areas that both the Republicans and Democrats have been continually colluding to erode, like digital rights, privacy, etc.)
That got the libertarian candidate to over 1 percent this election cycle. They need 5 or 10 percent for the federal funding stuff, and perhaps more to actually get debate time and other media coverage. If Sanders hadn't betrayed his 'bernie bros' in the '16 cycle by signing on with the Democrat ticket, even if he'd lost, he would have gotten the percentage of votes to gather federal funding for the independents. His choice to sign on the Democrat ticket however lost them both the campaign funds he gathered and even a place on the ballet (They may have had a candidate but I don't even remember it showing up in the election results.)
Point being, until/unless we can get runoff voting legislated into the system here in the US, the best we can do is sacrifice a few elections, even if it that gives us another Trump (hopefully not the same one, so we don't risk a successful coup next time) so that the election after that sees one or more alternative political parties with the cloud to both erode the corporate sponsorship that has kept the two nominally colluding parties in power, and shift the presidency and congress into groups who have to listen to their consituents at risk of being permanently purged from politics thanks to voter disdain and ignoring the will of their constituents. Until that happens the same donkey and elephant show will keep going on, and we the American People will all be the worse off for it.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 15 2021, @04:33PM
I don't care how many people think lizard people are running our government.
Lizard people are not running our government.
The problem is the group of people who have so divorced themselves from reality that they believe these lies.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2021, @05:44PM
Tried to burn down? I guess it was a fiery but mostly peaceful process.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday January 15 2021, @07:27PM
The pedo lizard people, on the other hand, don't exist.
While lizard people is obviously not real and is often just a dog whistle for the "Jewish conspiracy", pedo island is very much real and the Epstein case has a very strong smell of cover-up. See also, Jimmy Savile.
If they don't want people to believe there's a vast pedo conspiracy, maybe they should stop making it so believable.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 16 2021, @01:22AM
Sure they do -- Epstein, Weinstein, Mossad Maxwell, and the many practitioners of the Metzitzah B'Peh getting away with it in plain sight -- and that's only the ones we know about.