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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 DannyB on Friday January 15 2021, @03:57PM
It is interesting how many educated long time Republicans are separating themselves from either their party, or at least from Trumpism.
It is interesting how many Republican judges, well educated people, including some Trump appointed judges, don't just drink the Trump koolaid when told to do so.
Educated people come to realize that the US is only 4 % of the world population. The other 96 % of people actually do exist!
Educated people discover the uncomfortable truth that not all people have white skin. (shudder Horrors!) And many of those oddball non white people are actually nice people if you can bring yourself to actually talk to them. Heck, you might even have to have one of them as a lab partner, or later a co worker, and actually get to know them.
Educated people discover that not all people (even white people) believe the same thing. Yes, sadly, people have different beliefs. One logical deduction from this is that: OMG that means there are people who believe differently than ME ME ME!!!
Educated people start to think about public policy in a longer term view and not so much about their most immediate needs in the next five minutes. Maybe it would be a good idea to have traffic signals? Roads? Bridges? Safe drinking water! Working sewer systems. Maybe a professional police force might be useful to keep crime down. Maybe military defense could be a good idea to preserve our way of life. All these simple things we take for granted. Things that people have bled and died for so we can enjoy our comfortable lives, even if we wish we had more / better. Nah! Let's just burn it all down! It won't affect my comfortable life! But will satisfy my short term rage! YEAH! BURN IT ALL!!! Educated people would embrace that idea.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?