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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 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..