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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: 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.