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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: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 15 2021, @03:35PM (22 children)
I also am not in favor of censorship. Yes, let the idiots talk. Give them rope to hang themselves with.
These big, private social platforms should want to be relieved of all obligation to do any policing. What's needed is that official organizations, law enforcement, representing the people, employed by the people, and answering to the people, watch for trouble. No, they shouldn't pull the plug either. It's like any other large social gathering. It's just prudent to have a few officers of the law about. Sky marshals on airplanes, a few uniformed and plain clothes cops at the carnival that came to town, police directing traffic for the megachurch on Sunday, that sort of thing. The EU Commission is right in this.
One of the whines I have often heard about anything new that draws in people is that it will draw in criminal elements too. It's as if, upon proposing a new road, law enforcement makes a big case that they don't have the resources to patrol it, it will make it easier for bank robbers to escape, and easier for all those criminals to come here from that impoverished town or neighborhood full of low lifes that will now be much more closely connected. And therefore the proposal should be rejected. They don't make a fuss over a new road, usually, but anything else that's a bit unusual, oh yeah. Like, if a foot trail is proposed. See, everyone knows that only poor people walk, and, poverty making them more desperate, are more likely to commit crimes.
As for deplatforming troublemakers, that's something that is perhaps best handled by the legal system. Use warrants and such like judicial decision making. Might be very hard, perhaps impossible to make a case that any citizen should be cut off. For an example, always, anti-piracy advocates want those accused of piracy to be kicked completely off the Internet, all connection cut, implying that it is only logical, as if the Internet is a weapon that has been used to commit a crime and the only sensible way to stop further crime is to take the weapon away.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 15 2021, @05:32PM (21 children)
My house, my rules.
My website, my rules.
The Might Buzzard and Co's website, TMB & Co's rules.
Twitter's website, Twitters rules.
It's not that complicated.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday January 15 2021, @06:04PM (9 children)
It's a little more complicated than that. It's also:
My hosting company, my rules.
My search engine, my rules.
My domain registrar, my rules.
My ISP, my rules.
etc.
So even if you own your own website, you can't allow speech on it that any of the other companies that make it accessible to the public don't approve of.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 15 2021, @06:08PM (8 children)
ISP's were banned from blocking tings because they were classified as Common Carries until Team Trump revoked that classification.
So you can thank Trump for the ISP's being able to block stuff they don't like.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 15 2021, @06:47PM (2 children)
By the FCC, which is useless. Congress failed to pass legislation between 2009 and 2011 to make it really stick. FCC rules are changed by pure whimsy of the executive unless congress acts, which they won't, because they really don't want common carrier either. If they did, it would be law.
We need to use technology to make censorship as difficult as possible, can't depend on the law, that would be foolish
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 15 2021, @08:04PM (1 child)
ISPs were reclassified to be Common Carriers in 2015. [senate.gov]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 15 2021, @08:34PM
An FCC order, that allowed it to regulate the ISPs, totally bogus, easily overturned by the next admin. Congressional legislation is needed to make it a mandate to regulate the ISPs. They had that chance between 2009 and 2011 when they had a majority and the nuclear option, but instead abdicated. Why are you in denial?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday January 15 2021, @07:01PM (1 child)
You have your causation mixed up. ISPs were already blocking stuff in violation of their common carrier status, so they were reclassified. They were essentially double covered by common carrier and section 230 protections and while the Trump administration had no way to remove both directly, reclassification at least means that they would be subject to the same rules as everyone else who controls the content going through their systems. Then any follow on revisions to section 230 to address the free speech issue would apply to them as well unless they want to change their policies to regain common carrier protections.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 15 2021, @08:54PM
As horrible as the whole CDA is, it and section 230 were passed by congress. Reclassification of the ISPs also requires an act of congress to make it real and a tiny bit more permanent. They squandered that chance a decade ago, mainly because they need a national firewall, you know, to block piratebay... FCC regs can and always will change at the drop of a hat.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2021, @07:03PM (2 children)
Net Neutrality isn't the same thing as Common Carrier. CC is a stricter standard than NN, and is what ISPs should have been from the start. The NN fight also predates Trump by at least a decade.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 15 2021, @08:02PM (1 child)
2015: FCC Reclassifies ISPs as Common Carriers [adweek.com]
2018: FCC Eliminates Common Carrier Regulation of Broadband Providers [lexology.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 15 2021, @08:37PM
2009 - 2011: Congress fails to classify ISPs as common carriers!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2021, @06:07PM (1 child)
Too short-sighted. There is a slight difference between SN and Twitter. Try to find it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2021, @07:25PM
Does it only de-cloak if you're butthurt about a recent election or something?
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Friday January 15 2021, @06:57PM (7 children)
In a hard right liberatarian or anarcho-capitalist world, that may be true. But there is a legal concept of Quasi Public Places where the analogy to "your house your rules" breaks down, because now you aren't excluding the public from your house, you are inviting them in. If we truly lived in a "your house" world, there would be no regulation on the cleanliness of restaurants for example. Inviting the public into your kitchen, invites the government too.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 15 2021, @07:28PM (6 children)
Sorry, no. That only goes so far. Walmart invites the general public into their supercenters, but that invitation is good only as long as you obey their rules. They have every right to kick your ass to the curb if you: 1) shoplift, 2) make a scene or act disorderly, 3) try to set up a protest, 4) refuse to wear and shirt and shoes, 5) now, refuse to wear a mask, or 6) do just about anything else the manager doesn't care for. Any business open to the public has the right to kick people out, and if they refuse to leave voluntarily, it becomes "criminal trespass" and you can be arrested.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday January 15 2021, @07:54PM (4 children)
Quasi-public restrictions are limited, but they are limited based on purpose. If you create a space where you invite people in for the purpose of operating a retail business, then you can kick people out that you don't want to do business with (though even that is subject to accessibility and protected class protections). But if the purpose of the space is for the public to interact and speak with each other, then that comes with an obligation to allow everyone to speak freely. Currently this legally only applies to real property, but I think extending the same principles to internet sites makes sense.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday January 16 2021, @01:26AM (3 children)
But if the purpose of the space is for the public to interact and speak with each other, then that comes with an obligation to allow everyone to speak freely. Currently this legally only applies to real property, but I think extending the same principles to internet sites makes sense.
Sorry, no, I don't buy it. You'll have to provide proof if you want me to believe this wild-ass claim.
There is no way I will believe that someone can open a privately-owned space for the public to interact, and then be required to allow literal Nazis to speak freely.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Saturday January 16 2021, @06:28AM (2 children)
The circumstances are limited, but there are certain situations. See Marsh v. Alabama.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday January 16 2021, @07:29PM (1 child)
Interesting, and thanks for actually responding to my challenge with a substantive reply.
However, at the very end of the Wikipedia article about this SCOTUS case, it says: 'Recently the case has been highlighted as a potential precedent to treat online communication media like Facebook as a public space to prevent it from censoring speech. However, in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck the Supreme Court found that private companies only count as state actors for first amendment purposes if they exercise “powers traditionally exclusive to the state."'
So, it does look like using this case as precedent has already been attempted, but failed at the SCOTUS level. In the Marsh case, the company town was exercising normal state powers, like policing, maintaining infrastructure (the town roads and sidewalks and probably utilities too), etc. Facebook et al don't do any such thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Community_Access_Corp._v._Halleck [wikipedia.org]
Interestingly, it was the Court's conservatives who wrote the majority opinion here. The Court is now ever more conservative thanks to Trump, so I wouldn't expect them to rule differently if they're traditional, constitutional conservatives (which they appear to be), because they typically are more in favor of private-property rights than liberals.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Sunday January 17 2021, @07:28PM
Yeah, true. It's not likely that it will happen in the courts. Although, that really shouldn't be the process to make changes anyway. The best approach would be to change the law to address it. That would probably take the form of some common carrier like standards and objective and fair guidelines for removing content and banning users. Enforcement could be accomplished by fines as well as revoking section 230 protections for repeated violations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @07:53PM
"5) now, refuse to wear a mask, or"
No, you liar. They had to drop that shit pretty damn quick.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday January 15 2021, @10:54PM
All in jeopardy of losing most of their ability to be funded if Visa and MC declare our credit cards, our rules.