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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, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Friday January 15 2021, @04:26PM (3 children)
That is only true if its two dudes yelling at each other on a corner with information that is equal and the same. Proving a negative is almost impossible, and not a great way to go about life.
I watched hours and hours of the "testimony" of people that wanted to say it was rigged. I heard it was too warm for anyone to accurately count ballots. I heard it was too cold to count ballots. I heard the power went out one time. I heard we should have done it like the Iraqi's. There were endless people describing how people were mean to them. I never once heard anything that even in the slightest would tip the scales. Doubt does not equal fraud.
No transparency? I continue to hear this, and I have yet to find anything to back this up. I continue to hear that peoples feelings were hurt, but no evidence of actual malpractice. Do we really need 10 people looking over the shoulders of the 5 people from varying parties that already count and verify each others ballots? Sounds great when yelling this in a crowd, but if you did this and everyone got to have an objection because of a scuff mark on a ballot, the ballots would never be counted in time and you'd have the same people saying this was the conspiracy.
All of the laws of these states were on the books and challengable before the election. Why didn't that happen? Because these politicians and lawyers know that the public memory is about as long as the next headline. It is super easy to stir the pot. It is extremely difficult to do anything in government in a manner that doesn't upset someone.
I'd suggest for every one of these people that want to whine and complain, that they themselves go down and sign up to help out in the next election. Go run for office. Go sign up to count ballots and learn how the process work. If the process doesn't work, then you're lucky, we vote in 2 years, so lobby your government to fix it. Go work in the local government and learn for themselves that in the end, most of the grandma's counting ballots are actually well meaning and nice people.
Standing on the side claiming the world should stop because one has doubts is nonsense. Offering only complaints and no solutions isn't helpful.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 15 2021, @05:55PM (2 children)
The irony being that these are all the "she lost, get over it" folks that are now rioting because they lost and can't get over it.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2021, @08:06PM (1 child)
No, it's hardly all. It is a very small subset, and mind you none of them are remotely conservative. They just latch onto whatever is happening at the tome. Real conservatives are waiting for other shoe to drop.
This is about as ironic as this site claiming it is nothing like the green site, within few years becoming even more rife with Leftist drivel than the Green site. What a fucking accomplishment.
Now mod this post a flamebait, so everyone can clap...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 16 2021, @12:24AM
OK, done. Did you have some point?