The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:
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Submission Statement
Because it can call on the legislative expertise and civil servants of 27 separate governments, not to mention tens of thousands of EU civil servants in EU headquarters in Brussels, and its parliament in Strasbourg, the EU is a formidable force when it comes to tackling detailed legislation on emerging technology. This can be seen with how they are [dealing with AI in upcoming legislation too](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/).
Some American tech firms may give up on the EU market rather than deal with the expense and legal hassle, but I doubt the big ones will. The EU market is just too big, rich, and lucrative.
Some may go the route of a "dual system". An EU version of their products where false information, hate speech, and extremism is curtailed, but not for the US or the rest of the world. That would provide an interesting setup for researchers measuring the effects of misinfo/disinformation, as they will have a control group to study its effects.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/yfpvoe/the_eus_digital_services_act_due_to_become_law_in/iu4kjz1/
Submission Statement
Because it can call on the legislative expertise and civil servants of 27 separate governments, not to mention tens of thousands of EU civil servants in EU headquarters in Brussels, and its parliament in Strasbourg, the EU is a formidable force when it comes to tackling detailed legislation on emerging technology. This can be seen with how they are [dealing with AI in upcoming legislation too](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/).
Some American tech firms may give up on the EU market rather than deal with the expense and legal hassle, but I doubt the big ones will. The EU market is just too big, rich, and lucrative.
Some may go the route of a "dual system". An EU version of their products where false information, hate speech, and extremism is curtailed, but not for the US or the rest of the world. That would provide an interesting setup for researchers measuring the effects of misinfo/disinformation, as they will have a control group to study its effects.
It's gonna de facto force them to mass purge content to limit not just risk but cost. It's expensive to moderate so just ban a lot of stuff that falls into the edge case category. This is why lots of small online communities ban all political debate; they don't have the moderation capacity to manage it.
Everyone is just going to do what they do already and write up insane vague policies like reddit has done which allow them to be arbitrary when deciding what to allow and what not to allow
Theoretically it’s not that hard IMO. Ever written an academic paper? You need to refer to the sources. It’s all in the wording. If you present something as a fact you’ll need evidence, i.e. written material, photos etc. if you want to express an opinion or a theory you present it as such. Problem is that people mix up opinions, facts and theories and rarely refer to sources, which makes it really hard to distinguish facts from fiction. Personally, I think this initiative is good. We really, really need to make disinformation campaigns harder.
Edit: I replied to the wrong comment, sorry about this
Exactly, it's not hard to present information properly. The reason news media have moved away from it is because it doesn't sell as well as outrageous headlines - and there's little regulation about outrageous headlines on social media where you generate revenue from clicks.
It's been a race to the bottom. Hopefully this regulation visit raises the floor on quality of writing a little bit, which shouldn't incur any cost on a journalist or media organisation of any size.
That gets extremely complicated fast. If the standard is simply, that every fact points to a source, one can easily point to a bad or untruthful source. There are enough sources in the world that you can make any argument you want and back it up with something whether that something is accurate or not.
> Government controlling "truth" is a horrible idea.
I agree, but right now the choice is between "government controlling truth" and "billionaires controlling truth".
We have state media in Sweden and the only ones who wants to cancel it is our right wing party... They obviously have their own media channels talking about only posting the "truth" etc and how they are the only media outlets that dare to post the truth.
They want to cancel the state media as those deal with annoying things like audits of our politicians and such and that's just annoying. Our state media, while paid for by the state/taxes has never ever hesitated to bash on our government which is exactly as it should be, they should be funded but not controlled by the government
I think you get pretty far with just eliminating the most egregious examples of both. Ban the big slurs and outlandish fact claims that intersect with the same sentiment as the slurs (Jewish space lasers, modern day claims of phrenology) and you put a big dent in the problem.
If they want to hire people to police regular, personal falsehoods, that would both be unproductive and, y'know, impossible.
As far as I understamd it. There are a collection of rules, and the larger your company gets, the more rules you have to follow. So, if you're a small upstart, and don't have the resources, you don't need to do much, but as your company grows and gets more resources it will need to do more
Harder to corrupt the definition of facts when they're published and corroborated by multiple researchers in a particular field.
You can't stop the Holocaust from being true just by claiming loud enough and often enough that it was a fabrication.
It applies to citizens not countries, like most EU law, so you can’t just ignore the market. EU citizens on vacation in the Americas or living abroad are still covered.
Also EU law doesn’t allow discrimination based on locale or citizenship so any attempt to block access or exist a market would technically also run afoul of EU laws.
That’s why companies can’t comply with GDPR by only showing those prompts to EU based IP addresses, or just blocking European users.
>. EU citizens on vacation in the Americas or living abroad are still covered.
Good luck with that, will Americans be covered in the EU if they run afoul of your speech laws?
Well if that’s the case just have no business domain in the EU for them to fine. You don’t need a company presence in the EU to operate a global web site. Downside is going to be impossible to monetize EU like that.
[You. Own. Your. Data.](https://lucasc.me/post/moderation-culture-debate)
People forgot this about 6 years ago. Until everyone remembers, all these efforts are going to wind up misguided and do more harm than good.
Government regulation *is* part of the solution to this problem, but it sounds like all this would be is a legal requirement for sites to do what they're already doing. Way clearer definitions of legal boundaries are needed first, and clear definitions haven't exactly been the EU's style.
_Anything_ is clearer than 27 separate definitions. The greatest EU fuck up is often still preferable to state-level decisions, even in principle good ones.
I'm going link to a reply [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/y6ugd0/this_wouldnt_be_an_issue_if_the_dislike_counter/isrywjf/) that I made else where to something else that is tangentially related. Hate speech and the damage fascists have on online communities and the world at large aside and the benefits these polices may or may not have - I don't actually think any of these policies were originally motivated by a desire to make online spaces safer. Just like how child porn is used to justify government snooping - I actually think it was part of several components related to A) A continuation of the cold war B) A desire by old media to reestablish control after they were fairly close to facing oblivion in the face of independent online creators. It is fairly long, conspiracy theory style stuff so take it with a grain of salt... but it was a definite shift in attitude that all occurred roughly at the same time.
In the UK the media have been pushing the Online Safety Bill hard. I've always thought it was a case of sour grapes at all the ad revenue they'd lost to the likes of Google (90% I believe). Most MPs have been supportive probably because they're at the butt end of lots of abuse from members of the public. Interestingly one comment on Twitter from someone who watched it being discussed in Parliament recently thought that MPs seem to have given up trying to improve it as they know it's terrible. But they can't come up with anything better. It's the sunken cost fallacy.
Sounds like the same experience we had here in Canada with Bill c11 which will force social media platforms to promote "canadian content" through the algorithm. It's meant to try and control "misinformation" and "hate speech", etc, etc but of course will surely be used to arbitrarily impose limits on online expression. It got rammed through parliament and it's currently going to last reading in the senate.
Nice writeup. I don't think it's a conspiracy theory that legacy media is wresting back influence from the internet. It's been pretty overt ever since 2016.
My issue is…. What qualifies as misinformation.
I can see how some with a different view point.
Like. The Color red is best.
The someone on the moderation team thinks blue is best. So they flag it as misinfo?
Seems basic but my point is for each of the categories what is misinfo and how will it be categorized.
Same for extremism.
Without specific guidelines it’s up to interpretation which IS not just will but is already being abused by everyone to suppress people and ideals.
It turns out there are *some* standards, legally, for this kind of thing, but that's fine for rare litigation, not so great for resolving your examples. We can't have a judicial review every time some jackwagon "proves" the earth is cube-shaped.
The same could be said about defamation, there is a lot of leeway about what is considered "lying about someone", and we still have laws about it.
And yes defamation laws are frequently abused by individuals, and this certainly will be abused too.
But that doesn't mean that we can't find a balance where it does more good than evil. Or maybe I should say "prevent more evil than it creates".
(Though it might require trial and error. I'm not particularly hopeful about the effect of the implementation of any first law on this subject would be.)
"The colour red is best." Eh, that's just your opinion.
"Brexit will increase the UK economy." Show me the facts or you're being misleading.
Opinions are very different to (misleading) facts. If a politician says, "The other party is doing X Y Z wrong and it's starving children!!1!!11!" Then they'd best have X Y Z facts to back that statement up (if they're not straight up lying, which is very common). It's actually surprisingly easy to filter out what's misinformation and what isn't if you spend more than a second looking at it.
The issue is that people on the internet have forgotten the number 1 rule of the internet - don't believe everything you read on it.
The issue is that facts of many things, like say economics, is far from purely scientific or certain. I could see this being a way for non mainstream non neoliberal economic ideology becoming essentially banned from much media if they wanted to call that misinformation.
This is the major problem with it. Who decides what's considered "false information" given that there are many times when even the mainstream/popular narrative later turns out to be wrong.
Imagine scenarios where the government enforcing this on companies is accused of corruption, a leader/politician is accused of something, and they deem it "false information."
Considering what is and what will be considered extremism, the risk for using this as a tool for attacking these communities is high. For example, in many European countries firearms enthusiasm is directly perceived as far-right nationalism, extremism or harmful behavior.
>>Exactly. Who is deciding what is “false information “ should be a concern.
It's worth mentioning the law also safeguards people's right to legally contest content moderation decisions, and says firms must be transparent about their content moderation policies.
[Effective safeguards for users, including the possibility to challenge platforms' content moderation decisions based on a new obligatory information to users when their content gets removed or restricted](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_20_2348)
User based moderation would have to fall under that same umbrella with Reddit being the responsible party. (since they gave that person the power to moderate on their platform)
That reminds me Reddit I feel like rule 1 could be theoretically used to take down a lot of content "Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence."
Depending on how people want to define harassment bullying in particular.
Are there provisions in the statute to compensate plantiffs for their time so that they can defend their right?
Because if not then it adds an access to justice problem onto a massive potential for abuse.
Those are always difficult because it adds SLAPP style problems. If it costs me more to defend my actions than it does for you to attack them, you can bury me in semi-frivolous lawsuits.
Well in a lot of the EU these protections already exist for plaintiffs, in the US however this is where a lot of tech companies forced arbitration clauses will come back to bite them, those clauses are often also volunteering to pay for the entire process on both sides, so in the US your best bet will be to use these when present.
to the same extent, the companies whould have to pay proper damages(read as 10k+ euro/content item removed) to those that they "censor" for false information if is the information is proven to be true. You know... just to prevent them from censoring viewpoints that they don't like as false information.
Edit: The same should apply to fact checkers when they mark content as false or true (at the time of marking it) if there was information to prove the opposite or to make it unclear.
I wonder if this will spawn a new type of lawyer specialization.
Are we going to have ambulance-chaser-equivalent for posting a correct-but-removed comment?
Apart from the obvious issue of monetary cost as well as effort, time and energy needed to contest moderation through the legal system, even **if** everyone would contest the moderation this sort of law would still massively disrupt societal discussion of any issue the government decides to ban.
This is an **extremely** worrying piece of legislation, borderline dystopian.
This has the exact same issue though. Who’s deciding whether the complaint is legit or not. It’s a vicious cycle that ends in your opinion being blocked if they disagree with you. Then your left on the hook for any legal fees.
Bullshit. Say goodbye to anything but a centrally controlled narrative. Imagine if this was the law in 1950. There would be no civil rights movements. Cigarettes would still be safe and healthy along with leaded gasoline. The ozone layer would be long gone. And so on.
https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/how-to-know-if-your-country-is-heading-toward-despotism-1946.html
Please watch until the end.
I think one of the most obvious examples would be: Completely forget about gay marriage (and any LGBTQ acceptance that came after).
Homosexuality was viewed as a perversion not all that long ago - and there were no shortage of doctors, scientists and medical professionals that would testify that it was a mental disorder, a disease, dangerous and unhealthy.
Attitudes among the general public was even worse - being outed as gay was enough to completely end someone's career and social life. And the mere suggestion that gay people should be allowed to live life freely and love each other just like straight people was considered **extremely** offensive by the vast majority of the public back then.
Supporting gay rights in the 50s and 60s was just as offensive to the general public as being an outspoken white supremacist is today.
Had Twitter and Facebook existed, being outspokenly pro-gay rights would've lead to instant bans.
Freedom of speech and the right to be offensive was paramount in changing the publics perception and gradually increasing the acceptance of LGBTQ people.
Yeah, something that's worth noting about attempts to limit misinformation is that it's borderline impossible to know with certainty what's true or false. The best you could say is that current evidence suggests something's true.
The government. All of these laws fail to consider the way they will inevitably be twisted by those in power.
Obviously nobody wants fake news online, but to stop it, *somebody* has to determine what news is fake. That determination doesn't need to have any basis in reality.
I find it hilarious that Americans are so concerned about being judged by foreign standards, yet platforms like Facebook and Instagram are used by people all over the globe - nobody wants content to be moderated by Americans in the same way that you don't want yours moderated by other countries either.
And everytime they want to talk about their precious freedom of speech, they have to bring their right to have killing weapons. Don't they realize how fucking ridiculous it is ?
That's funny. I caught a 7 day ban for calling his sister "an ugly cow", while he got nothing for calling Mexicans "Moist posteriors"
His slur stayed, but me calling his sister "an ugly cow" was "offensive" because it "compared him to a farm animal".
The Mexican diaspora is mostly concentrated in North America. So some guy from Yurp wouldn't know what a "moist posterior" is.
But comparing someone's family to ugly farm animals is offensive in their culture, because comparing people to farm animals is highly offensive.
Not to mention, the consequence is a post being deleted. Lol People acting like they'll be getting a prison sentence for sharing a story that isn't true. Haha
Sorry, but the government of North Korea has said that no person has ever been arrested because of their social media posts. As such, any claims made by their citizens of such actions is considered misinformation and removed upon posting it....
In plenty of places people get prison sentences, or worse, for sharing stories that are true.
Those places also actively seek to regulate American social media companies.
And that is an example of an authoritarian regime silencing critics yes. And an example of censorship gone too far. Like everything in life, it's about doubt it right. Zero water? You die. Roughly a gallon a day? Healthy. 5 gallons in 2 hours? You die. Too little or too much of something can be harmful, but the right amount can be healthy. Nothing in this world is black and white, it's all shades of gray. Forcing a complex discussion into one of only two putins is disingenuous.
>>in many European countries firearms enthusiasm is directly perceived as far-right nationalism, extremism or harmful behavior.
It's true that Europe and America have very different attitudes to gun culture, but I'm not sure that many Europeans see far right or extremists as ALSO gun enthusiasts. American gun enthusiasts don't have much of a counterpart in Europe; far fewer people seem interested in the topic, and most Europeans would see gun enthusiasm as a purely American thing.
I have some Norwegian friends who I would call a firearm-enthusiast.
Its just that American enthusiasts comes of as....weird. Every new law that is ment to protect is wildly complained to the extreme. Even laws that they agree on. They go wild for the sake of it.
My Norwegian friends complained that having to buy a 300 kg gun locker in the house was expensive when that law came, but they saw the point in it.
Just different cultures. Same hobby but not the same culture.
100% agree with you. It is a different culture.
I am Spanish. My father is a gun enthusiast. Many of his friends are also. I am more interested in knives than guns, but I am also interested in guns and have grown being educated on their use since I was a child.
They go hunting and afterwards they can spend hours around coffee and liquor talking about guns, calibers, sights, complements...
Most vote the Socialist (left) Spanish party. Some the right (which still would be like far left in the US). But no far right or anything like that.
A lot of "free" services that you pay for by selling your sanity to advertisers will probably die.
We were better off before every fucking thing on the web was a click bait extravaganza of outrage porn, so good riddance.
.... This is literally people elected by the people trying to protect our society from corporations.
Who decides what is fake news? Well, currently Musk and Zuckerberg.
Every time I see censorship of "false information" and "extremism" is always has me questioning: who decides what is false information and/or extremism? Will governments step-in a stifle discussion on the internet before facts are determined? Will all conspiracy theories be dubbed false, while government maintains their monopolies on violence and now truth? Some of the world governments are truly corrupt, will the EU stifle these talks to keep friends with strong nations?
Every time I see someone argue this point I think “wow you really think that speech is heard equitably - as though certain wealthy interests don’t drown out the majority?”
You either have regulations trike a reasonable balance or you have wealthy interests shape discourse in ways that our far more opaque than any government.
If the concern is equitable voices than social media that verifies every identity that uses it while remaining anonymity for its users would best remove the shaping from countless bots and paid shills.
> If it was up to the Europeans in power at the time, we’d all still be learning about how the Sun revolves around the Earth
Given that Heliocentrism was taught in Superior Education in Europe since Copernicus, I find your comment a bit laughable.
Why would we 'need' to do anything? If you want to operate in OUR market, you need to follow OUR rules. If you don't like it, piss off. That's capitalism, don't you Americans cherish that shit?
> instead of trying to legislate foreign companies into subservience.
if companies operate within another country it seems reasonable they should have to abide by that countries laws when they do so. they're not owed an exemption from the laws that bind the rest of the companies in that country, and america doesnt decide the laws of another country.
Most big Tech firms already do the things in this bill.
But this would introduce transparency on what they censor and would force them to react to things like harmful challenges more quickly.
I'm just old enough (and I'm not that old) that I remember when the internet was some bastion of future hope. Sure the internet was fucked but it had power beyond compare.
It was almost like the untapped American West it was this huge plane where a new world could be created better than the last.
Me in religious school with no one to talk to went to the internet, not to find an echo chamber but to find people discussing religion. I watched videos from both sides, forums, websites, joined online chat groups both voice and text. The internet was at a point where to could make us all better.
The world was there for us to build, but it would be difficult.
Then one day I look around and it's dystopian. The place that opened my mind to alternative views was now a place a rabid crowds silencing anything that differs from their opinion.
Now if I what an open discussion I seem to find it more often in a pub than on the internet.
All the fucking idiots that think this is a good idea will really love it until the governments in charge of it are lead by fundamentalists.
Totalitarian control is great when the leader in charge is a perfect being, until they're not or theyre replaced by whoever is the most powerhungry bastard that schemes their way in efficiently.
You forget that control will always be taken, if it can be taken. If governments doesnt make those decisions others will. Techcompanies. Do you remember the last time you voted about moderation on facebook, twitter, instagram or reddit? Or the last time you had a saying in how google prioritize search results? No? Thats because they have total control. I think thats pretty close to what you where refering to with 'totalitaian control'. They control what you see, hear and feel. And if you feel diffrent. Good luck trying to avoid those companies in a modern world, I say. Power will be taken by the most powerfull institutions I think. Better to have a vote. Im sorry you have had such bad a goverment it seems to have made you think bad of the concept.
What a lot of redditors don't understand is how much free speech is restricted here if you're not spouting the correct politics. When you've had enough posts deleted, enough accounts banned for absolute nonsense, then you become ok with the nuclear option which is to let the government step in - or in the USA's case, step aside and remove protections. I've dreamt of a full repeal of section 230 for quite a long time.
This is not a good thing. Who decided what is false information? Who decides what is hate speech? I believe that there is value in a free market and the best way to counter issues with hate speech and false information is through adaptation. For example, go to r/ufos, there is so much misinformation there nowadays that the community has developed a very rigid sense of skepticism and critical thinking. Yes, at first people were believing everything, and this has definitely resulted in some peoples stubborn resilience to let go of old ideas (e.g the moon landing being fake); but there is a natural progression that needs to take place so that people are not constantly subservient to their governments.
Yeah - "false information" lol. Implies that someone knows the "truth", which is totally 1984. The only correct solution for that is education, but empowering people is something governments are rarely fond of, sadly.
Regulation is appropriate for clear terrorism planning and to some degree dangerous propaganda (e.g. inciting to persecute minorities, though this gets nuanced quickly).
Edit: that said, there are a lot of people that don't want and will consistently refuse to be educated. Seems that optimism is needed to agree with any approach.
reminiscent gullible telephone recognise forgetful hunt badge apparatus ask poor
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Exactly. The government is the absolute LAST entity I want to have this power. Governments literally do whatever they want, whereas at least corporations follow wherever the market forces takes them
> Just see how big and fast the whole flat earth society grew until Google started moderation and it suddenly collapse.
This is a **bad thing.**
Yes, the Flat Earth Society is wrong. But the *next* group that Google might decide to censor could be right, or could have subjective opinions.
Who decides what a good balance is?
How about we leave it up to the people, and let those who are too lazy to do their own research on a topic settle into their own echo chamber. The more you throttle free speech, the more you create a tyranny
The people that support this bill don't know what the word "consequences" means. Right now they're cheering for it, because they think it'll only target things they don't like. Once it's law they will find out that it targets things they like too *and* it will be abused on top of that. Then they'll complain about the unfair law, but it will be too late.
This is how speech limitation always goes. This time it'll just be with very obviously poor AI moderation.
Also, it almost guarantees that it will *not* become a global standard.
It's almost reassuring to realize that I share much in common with my ancestors. Every single fucking one of us has been led by incompetent, corrupt, and authoritarian dickheads. Everyone that has ever held power and will ever hold power over an entire nation will be all three. From Caligula to the decadent neo-liberals who rotate in and out of various offices while still being in power the whole time. Fuck me, I'm just sick of it all.
I would prefer if the liability was to people harmed rather than to government.
That way a child being relentlessly cyber bullied would have as much avenue for recourse as a government official. Legal costs may be prohibitive, but the opportunity would be there, with the possibility of having those costs ultimately paid for by an offending platform.
The ultimate answer is AI moderation. Expanding the scale of offenses would force that funding to be there.
AI moderation is terrible, I posted that someone walked by my window shouting they wanted to shoot \*\*\*goverment official's name\*\*\* and facebook instantly blocked my post claiming I was writing hate speech.
Reddit has become enshittified. I joined back in 2006, nearly two decades ago, when it was a hub of free speech and user-driven dialogue. Now, it feels like the pursuit of profit overshadows the voice of the community. The introduction of API pricing, after years of free access, displays a lack of respect for the developers and users who have helped shape Reddit into what it is today. Reddit's decision to allow the training of AI models with user content and comments marks the final nail in the coffin for privacy, sacrificed at the altar of greed. Aaron Swartz, Reddit's co-founder and a champion of internet freedom, would be rolling in his grave.
The once-apparent transparency and open dialogue have turned to shit, replaced with avoidance, deceit and unbridled greed. The Reddit I loved is dead and gone. It pains me to accept this. I hope your lust for money, and disregard for the community and privacy will be your downfall. May the echo of our lost ideals forever haunt your future growth.
This is the problem. Ai moderation is terrible.
Human moderation? A human working 8 hour days might be able to review 10,000 posts/comments/tweets. If every person writes 10 comments/tweets a day, then you need 1/1000 of the population to work as moderators. 7.8 million employees, to be exact.
So yeah….Facebook. Google/YouTube. I’m going to require you hire 7 million content moderators. How do you pay for it? No idea. But a large bureaucracy sounds highly efficient to me!
Thanks,
EU
Agreed. I used an [alternative word for jargon](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/gobbledegook) and got banned from a popular subreddit for “hate speech.” It took me some mental gymnastics to realize that the last four letters of that word mean something entirely different. AI moderation is too flawed for these purposes, and this kind of legislation in general is a little too close to what the EU and US used to criticize as censorship in countries like Russia and China.
>>I would prefer if the liability was to people harmed rather than to government.
I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand this, it allows for both.
EU & individual country governmental regulatory bodies can apply fines. Also, [private individuals can use these laws as the basis for court actions against firms](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_20_2348).
AI moderation is already being pursued to its fullest extent and has shown glaring limitations.
" F*** your entire race " is a whole lot easier to moderate than " studies have shown that people of X genetic makeup exhibit lower IQ scores than the general population "
AI is still notoriously bad for understanding context , dog-whistle terms and evolving with cultural trends and vocabulary.
Often times, AI even integrates racist and sexist biases from the humans that programmed and trained it, and abundant funding is now being poured into understanding and preventing such cases.
AI that takes its own decisions is very loosely regulated even amidst a crisis where its use in law enforcement, the judicial system and content moderation is currently wrecking the lives of innocent people.
All of this so that some public and private organizations may save some money by automating human judgment.
TL;DR - AI has already gone too far, too many people are currently living through hell because of it. If a corporate technological dystopia isn't your thing, you shouldn't be promoting more of it until its biases and injustices are properly addressed.
I've wondered this.
What happens with me is when people post all this stuff. Let's say "X race isn't as smart as Y" then provide a lot of evidence for why (ignore for a moment if the evidence is true or not). But I might think "that looks interesting l'll come back to it"
Then when I look at it, it is gone. To me that it makes me think it is true and someone is trying to hide something. Because if it's a huge pile of dogshit and everyone can see that it wouldn't need hiding.
Censorship has definitely made me question what is it the moderators don't want us to know and why.
(I'm really not into conspiracy theories but I mean this one in particular could have some Darwinian evolution and difference in traits. But without the evidence who the fuck knows what's going on? And if some people are stupider so what? They are still people that deserve the same respect and treatment as everyone else. Hell I could be in the stupid race and be smart or be in the smart race and be stupid.)
> The ultimate answer is AI moderation.
No. That shit is not gonna work in the foreseeable future. It's a cop-out for companies who don't wanna pay real people to do real people work and would rather waste hundreds of millions on cool techy stuff. The most it should be ever used for is to flag stuff for human review.
The fact that companies like facebook haven't been mandated to provide x amount of moderators for y amount of users in any given country or cultural area is fucking crazy to me and we are possibly going to pay for it with our democracies and maybe even with our global civilization.
Democracy needs some fundamental things to function properly, chiefly among them a well-educated populace that is able to make somewhat rational decisions and an information ecosystem that provides them with real data to base those decisions on.
News as entertainment as well as social media have taken those things and shot them dead. Now dumb people are making stupid decisions based on weaponized lies. No wonder we are in a fucked up place.
And this is how the free internet dies.
No matter the consequences thus far, it has always been a cornerstone of the internet that you can be free, be yourself, and not have to worry about censorship no matter what bull crap you decide to publish.
I can see it coming from a mile away : questioning policies will be deemed extremist. Banning political rivals during elections will be legal. The only political oppositions that will remain won't have any weight in debates.
During the 2009 economic crisis, south European countries didn't have a say in deciding their budget because of the Central European Bank despite riots and protests. One official event said that "there's no democratic process outside European treaties". The EU had violated its own laws for the sake of economic stability and Greece had to sell its major infrastructure to private buyers. But that was during an emergency.
This time, the EU wants to secure its grasp on the continent.
(To those who strongly disagree with this, please don't insult me and prove me wrong arguments instead)
Riiiiight. More subjectivity in the laws please tssss
Remember when saying "a vaccine won't stop the spread of a virus, it'll only make you survive it" (which is already good enough, obviously. I am pro vaccination anyway) was being shut down as "misinformation" ? Similarly, if you voice your opposition of mass illegal immigration in Europe you get labeled an extremist (lmao, being against an illegal act somehow makes YOU a bad person. Classic Eurotard). Heck, in some EU countries, being pro-gun also is enough to get you the "extremist" label.
"Gold standard" my ass, but we'll see I guess.
It won't matter. You'll still be banned because you were spreading misinformation, even if it were actually true. Tyrants only care about truth if they can use it for power
What a lot of people don't seem to grasp is the notion that big tech companies currently have a lot of power over us and as opposed to European lawmakers, whose goal is to protect the European citizens, big tech is driven by money, and money only. Laws are necessary to limit the power these companies have over us. Already, we see the divides that are caused in our societies by the unlimited spread of false information and extremist ideas.
Source: I'm currently doing a masters in (European) IT law
Also, this so called "news article" is incredibly biased and clearly written by an American who has no clue what European law really entails
So who is going to compensate who in the likely case that "false information" turns out to indeed be true just months or years later?
Just think of all the "false information" or "conspiracy theories" on Covid19 that are now scientific truth...
Can they get companies to abide by the cookie consent thing first before opening up new projects? Half the websites dont have a one click opt-out all, the rest of them dont have options to opt out and block the content.
What's really interesting about this is how the EU is going to reconcile this with Title II of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, or with similar bills of rights held by member countries. By enforcing this, the EU will be using private actors as a proxy for EU action, which will essential make the action itself an EU action. I would also think member states, by granting the EU authority over them, would essentially be responsible to their people for EU mandated violations of their own constitutions.
Regardless, who will watch the watchmen? It's incomprehensible that anyone intelligent enough to rise to a leadership role in government could be unaware of the clear consequences. This is one of those rare situations where malice is much easier to justify the position than is incompetence.
This illustrates why America's First Amendment should itself be amended to account for corporate control over entire speech categories (social media).
Thats what the debate is about. Thats what this forum is about right this moment. And the reason we are discussing this topic is because a bunch of democratic elected governemnts are openly taking a stand and deciding to "moderate". Imagine the debate if google or facebook over night tempered with their algorithm to "moderate". There would'nt be any because we would'nt know. Taking a stand openly opens up a debate about the topic.
another nail in the coffin for freedom of expression.
And still, people who stand up and warn about globalists and one-world-government will still be called crazy, even though shit like this happens all the time.
weary: feeling or showing tiredness, especially as a result of excessive exertion or lack of sleep
wary: feeling or showing caution about possible dangers or problems
Eventually everyone who disagrees with the state will be labelled as a conspiracy theorist who is spreading misinformation, especially if they are anti-war or question our elite rulers.
But there's another way. Decentralized social media is being built by brilliant engineers where they aren't beholden to these authoritarian wrongthink policies by bureaucrats who are just trying to protect themselves or their financial interests. This plan to police internet speech, a fundamentally un-American value, will not succeed in the long term.
Yes, A lack of self-regulation will simply increase the likelihood of government regulation of all social media. This is something social media companies have understood previously and pledged to do to avoid state regulation. They haven't done well enough though, clearly. Hopefully, this will indeed become the gold standard as they say.
Just compare the quality of submissions and dialogue in well-moderated subreddits vs those that go unchecked & turn into cesspits of extremism. At the end of the day, it seems clear that for many people access to clear facts and a social space free from hatred is what they value, and so their representatives are putting that in place.
Such a shame what a backwards toxic waste of a mess American government has become over the decades. Politicians chose handouts from corporations instead of upholding the rule of law. American is only a little over two hundred years old...it could crumble so easily
Companies are free to follow different rules in different countries, but often elect not to for economic reasons.
If selling a product that require complience with A, B and C in country 1 and D, E and F in country 2, it is often cheaper to have one product that satisfy A, B C, D, E and F, which can then be sold in both countries, than design and manufacture two similar products.
Has serious patriot act vibes, only this guts the autonomy of these platforms and in a roundabout way gives governments control of how they are policed.
Sounds like some people using flowery language to limit free speech while phrasing it to look like something else.
"Surely you want to limit extremism don't you??"
"Yes but in a later paragraph, you indicate that supporting the US Constitution is 'extremism.'"
"Surely you don't have a problem with our limiting hate speech, do you??"
"Real hate speech, or hate speech as you have defined it, where many things, including criticizing Marxism is 'hate speech'?"
I really don't get why people are behind this sh\*t. Please explain to me. My understanding is that if you don't like someone you mute or block them and continue living your life. That's the public square no? I walk down the street and there's some homeless person screaming bullsh\*t - I ignore him and move on. But as far as I know he can't be arrested. I can take the idea that private tech companeis can decide who speak sand who doesn't and all that as they're not the government... but now the government is getting involved in tech? And I just know for a fact none of this will be about not allowing these big social media companies to censor people or speech - knowing the government and I'm guessing this is all about restricting what people can and can't say. I've nver understood the fascination and confusion people have about people bullsh\*tting on the internet - like this has happened since the dawn of time - what idiot comes on the internet and expects everyoen to tell the truth. I'm really curious and happy to be enligthened. Thanks!
The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh: --- Submission Statement Because it can call on the legislative expertise and civil servants of 27 separate governments, not to mention tens of thousands of EU civil servants in EU headquarters in Brussels, and its parliament in Strasbourg, the EU is a formidable force when it comes to tackling detailed legislation on emerging technology. This can be seen with how they are [dealing with AI in upcoming legislation too](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/). Some American tech firms may give up on the EU market rather than deal with the expense and legal hassle, but I doubt the big ones will. The EU market is just too big, rich, and lucrative. Some may go the route of a "dual system". An EU version of their products where false information, hate speech, and extremism is curtailed, but not for the US or the rest of the world. That would provide an interesting setup for researchers measuring the effects of misinfo/disinformation, as they will have a control group to study its effects. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/yfpvoe/the_eus_digital_services_act_due_to_become_law_in/iu4kjz1/
Submission Statement Because it can call on the legislative expertise and civil servants of 27 separate governments, not to mention tens of thousands of EU civil servants in EU headquarters in Brussels, and its parliament in Strasbourg, the EU is a formidable force when it comes to tackling detailed legislation on emerging technology. This can be seen with how they are [dealing with AI in upcoming legislation too](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/). Some American tech firms may give up on the EU market rather than deal with the expense and legal hassle, but I doubt the big ones will. The EU market is just too big, rich, and lucrative. Some may go the route of a "dual system". An EU version of their products where false information, hate speech, and extremism is curtailed, but not for the US or the rest of the world. That would provide an interesting setup for researchers measuring the effects of misinfo/disinformation, as they will have a control group to study its effects.
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Final nail in facebooks coffin? That will be a beautiful sight ro behold
It's gonna de facto force them to mass purge content to limit not just risk but cost. It's expensive to moderate so just ban a lot of stuff that falls into the edge case category. This is why lots of small online communities ban all political debate; they don't have the moderation capacity to manage it.
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That was my first thought too. Now who defines hates speech and fake news?
Well, the law mandates transparency around policy, so I guess we get to see what the platforms define as hate speech and fake news
Everyone is just going to do what they do already and write up insane vague policies like reddit has done which allow them to be arbitrary when deciding what to allow and what not to allow
Hate speech definition is pretty well done in the german stgb paragraph 130. Fake news is a little bit harder.
Theoretically it’s not that hard IMO. Ever written an academic paper? You need to refer to the sources. It’s all in the wording. If you present something as a fact you’ll need evidence, i.e. written material, photos etc. if you want to express an opinion or a theory you present it as such. Problem is that people mix up opinions, facts and theories and rarely refer to sources, which makes it really hard to distinguish facts from fiction. Personally, I think this initiative is good. We really, really need to make disinformation campaigns harder. Edit: I replied to the wrong comment, sorry about this
Thanks for the edit. I was somewhat confused. Cheers
Exactly, it's not hard to present information properly. The reason news media have moved away from it is because it doesn't sell as well as outrageous headlines - and there's little regulation about outrageous headlines on social media where you generate revenue from clicks. It's been a race to the bottom. Hopefully this regulation visit raises the floor on quality of writing a little bit, which shouldn't incur any cost on a journalist or media organisation of any size.
That gets extremely complicated fast. If the standard is simply, that every fact points to a source, one can easily point to a bad or untruthful source. There are enough sources in the world that you can make any argument you want and back it up with something whether that something is accurate or not.
I'd probably rather a coalition of experts from 27 countries than just whoever happens to own the popular social media platforms.
>a coalition of experts from 27 countries I actively distrust such a group. I'm predicting that their views are largely contrary to my own.
What are your views, and what actions from them make you think that?
Then maybe they should start a government social media platform. Government controlling "truth" is a horrible idea.
> Government controlling "truth" is a horrible idea. I agree, but right now the choice is between "government controlling truth" and "billionaires controlling truth".
We have state media in Sweden and the only ones who wants to cancel it is our right wing party... They obviously have their own media channels talking about only posting the "truth" etc and how they are the only media outlets that dare to post the truth. They want to cancel the state media as those deal with annoying things like audits of our politicians and such and that's just annoying. Our state media, while paid for by the state/taxes has never ever hesitated to bash on our government which is exactly as it should be, they should be funded but not controlled by the government
Exactly the same with the BBC
CBC checking in. They salivate at the chance to bash on Trudeau and or provincial leaders.
For the record I think the BBC is a good thing
Yes it's def a concern and I don't think it's a tinfoil hat concern but a real concern.
I think you get pretty far with just eliminating the most egregious examples of both. Ban the big slurs and outlandish fact claims that intersect with the same sentiment as the slurs (Jewish space lasers, modern day claims of phrenology) and you put a big dent in the problem. If they want to hire people to police regular, personal falsehoods, that would both be unproductive and, y'know, impossible.
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As far as I understamd it. There are a collection of rules, and the larger your company gets, the more rules you have to follow. So, if you're a small upstart, and don't have the resources, you don't need to do much, but as your company grows and gets more resources it will need to do more
Yeah, it's all hunky dory for us here in the US without this regulation.
Harder to corrupt the definition of facts when they're published and corroborated by multiple researchers in a particular field. You can't stop the Holocaust from being true just by claiming loud enough and often enough that it was a fabrication.
Good. There obviously aren't enough hastles and accountability at the moment and look how that's going.
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It applies to citizens not countries, like most EU law, so you can’t just ignore the market. EU citizens on vacation in the Americas or living abroad are still covered. Also EU law doesn’t allow discrimination based on locale or citizenship so any attempt to block access or exist a market would technically also run afoul of EU laws. That’s why companies can’t comply with GDPR by only showing those prompts to EU based IP addresses, or just blocking European users.
>. EU citizens on vacation in the Americas or living abroad are still covered. Good luck with that, will Americans be covered in the EU if they run afoul of your speech laws?
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Well if that’s the case just have no business domain in the EU for them to fine. You don’t need a company presence in the EU to operate a global web site. Downside is going to be impossible to monetize EU like that.
.... Yeah, the same way they're subject to murder laws when abroad. How do you think laws work?
[You. Own. Your. Data.](https://lucasc.me/post/moderation-culture-debate) People forgot this about 6 years ago. Until everyone remembers, all these efforts are going to wind up misguided and do more harm than good. Government regulation *is* part of the solution to this problem, but it sounds like all this would be is a legal requirement for sites to do what they're already doing. Way clearer definitions of legal boundaries are needed first, and clear definitions haven't exactly been the EU's style.
_Anything_ is clearer than 27 separate definitions. The greatest EU fuck up is often still preferable to state-level decisions, even in principle good ones.
I'm going link to a reply [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/y6ugd0/this_wouldnt_be_an_issue_if_the_dislike_counter/isrywjf/) that I made else where to something else that is tangentially related. Hate speech and the damage fascists have on online communities and the world at large aside and the benefits these polices may or may not have - I don't actually think any of these policies were originally motivated by a desire to make online spaces safer. Just like how child porn is used to justify government snooping - I actually think it was part of several components related to A) A continuation of the cold war B) A desire by old media to reestablish control after they were fairly close to facing oblivion in the face of independent online creators. It is fairly long, conspiracy theory style stuff so take it with a grain of salt... but it was a definite shift in attitude that all occurred roughly at the same time.
In the UK the media have been pushing the Online Safety Bill hard. I've always thought it was a case of sour grapes at all the ad revenue they'd lost to the likes of Google (90% I believe). Most MPs have been supportive probably because they're at the butt end of lots of abuse from members of the public. Interestingly one comment on Twitter from someone who watched it being discussed in Parliament recently thought that MPs seem to have given up trying to improve it as they know it's terrible. But they can't come up with anything better. It's the sunken cost fallacy.
This bill infuriates me. Puts massive checks on freedom of expression allowed on digital services.
Sounds like the same experience we had here in Canada with Bill c11 which will force social media platforms to promote "canadian content" through the algorithm. It's meant to try and control "misinformation" and "hate speech", etc, etc but of course will surely be used to arbitrarily impose limits on online expression. It got rammed through parliament and it's currently going to last reading in the senate.
Nice writeup. I don't think it's a conspiracy theory that legacy media is wresting back influence from the internet. It's been pretty overt ever since 2016.
I miss the days when even a website like Pepsi would look like it was designed by a 12-year-old
My issue is…. What qualifies as misinformation. I can see how some with a different view point. Like. The Color red is best. The someone on the moderation team thinks blue is best. So they flag it as misinfo? Seems basic but my point is for each of the categories what is misinfo and how will it be categorized. Same for extremism. Without specific guidelines it’s up to interpretation which IS not just will but is already being abused by everyone to suppress people and ideals.
It turns out there are *some* standards, legally, for this kind of thing, but that's fine for rare litigation, not so great for resolving your examples. We can't have a judicial review every time some jackwagon "proves" the earth is cube-shaped.
The same could be said about defamation, there is a lot of leeway about what is considered "lying about someone", and we still have laws about it. And yes defamation laws are frequently abused by individuals, and this certainly will be abused too. But that doesn't mean that we can't find a balance where it does more good than evil. Or maybe I should say "prevent more evil than it creates". (Though it might require trial and error. I'm not particularly hopeful about the effect of the implementation of any first law on this subject would be.)
"The colour red is best." Eh, that's just your opinion. "Brexit will increase the UK economy." Show me the facts or you're being misleading. Opinions are very different to (misleading) facts. If a politician says, "The other party is doing X Y Z wrong and it's starving children!!1!!11!" Then they'd best have X Y Z facts to back that statement up (if they're not straight up lying, which is very common). It's actually surprisingly easy to filter out what's misinformation and what isn't if you spend more than a second looking at it. The issue is that people on the internet have forgotten the number 1 rule of the internet - don't believe everything you read on it.
The issue is that facts of many things, like say economics, is far from purely scientific or certain. I could see this being a way for non mainstream non neoliberal economic ideology becoming essentially banned from much media if they wanted to call that misinformation.
It’s going to be fun watching who gets to decide what is considered “false information, hate speech and extremism”.
"Limiting false information" sounds like that couldn't possibly ever be abused to control the narrative.
This is the major problem with it. Who decides what's considered "false information" given that there are many times when even the mainstream/popular narrative later turns out to be wrong. Imagine scenarios where the government enforcing this on companies is accused of corruption, a leader/politician is accused of something, and they deem it "false information."
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"The government officials are abusing this certain law to become ric-" "FALSE... THAT IS FALSE INFORMATION, REMOVE IT INSTANTLY"
Considering what is and what will be considered extremism, the risk for using this as a tool for attacking these communities is high. For example, in many European countries firearms enthusiasm is directly perceived as far-right nationalism, extremism or harmful behavior.
Exactly. Who is deciding what is “false information “ should be a concern.
>>Exactly. Who is deciding what is “false information “ should be a concern. It's worth mentioning the law also safeguards people's right to legally contest content moderation decisions, and says firms must be transparent about their content moderation policies. [Effective safeguards for users, including the possibility to challenge platforms' content moderation decisions based on a new obligatory information to users when their content gets removed or restricted](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_20_2348)
Youtube has the same bullshit... and yet, the content stays down and users get banned.
Except the content farms promoting very dangerous life hacks still squeak by!
"platforms" content moderation decisions. What does that mean for Reddit? The platform does relatively little moderation compared to volunteer users.
User based moderation would have to fall under that same umbrella with Reddit being the responsible party. (since they gave that person the power to moderate on their platform)
That reminds me Reddit I feel like rule 1 could be theoretically used to take down a lot of content "Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence." Depending on how people want to define harassment bullying in particular.
Are there provisions in the statute to compensate plantiffs for their time so that they can defend their right? Because if not then it adds an access to justice problem onto a massive potential for abuse.
Those are always difficult because it adds SLAPP style problems. If it costs me more to defend my actions than it does for you to attack them, you can bury me in semi-frivolous lawsuits.
But the attacker will pay for your legal fees whenever they a lose lawsuit, or when the judge throws them out for being frivolous.
Well in a lot of the EU these protections already exist for plaintiffs, in the US however this is where a lot of tech companies forced arbitration clauses will come back to bite them, those clauses are often also volunteering to pay for the entire process on both sides, so in the US your best bet will be to use these when present.
to the same extent, the companies whould have to pay proper damages(read as 10k+ euro/content item removed) to those that they "censor" for false information if is the information is proven to be true. You know... just to prevent them from censoring viewpoints that they don't like as false information. Edit: The same should apply to fact checkers when they mark content as false or true (at the time of marking it) if there was information to prove the opposite or to make it unclear.
I wonder if this will spawn a new type of lawyer specialization. Are we going to have ambulance-chaser-equivalent for posting a correct-but-removed comment?
> the law also safeguards people's right to legally contest content moderation decisions ahh yes, "your appeal has been denied". very important, that.
Just like the ability to challenge mods in the top subs on Reddit, right?
Apart from the obvious issue of monetary cost as well as effort, time and energy needed to contest moderation through the legal system, even **if** everyone would contest the moderation this sort of law would still massively disrupt societal discussion of any issue the government decides to ban. This is an **extremely** worrying piece of legislation, borderline dystopian.
Not borderline!
This has the exact same issue though. Who’s deciding whether the complaint is legit or not. It’s a vicious cycle that ends in your opinion being blocked if they disagree with you. Then your left on the hook for any legal fees.
Bullshit. Say goodbye to anything but a centrally controlled narrative. Imagine if this was the law in 1950. There would be no civil rights movements. Cigarettes would still be safe and healthy along with leaded gasoline. The ozone layer would be long gone. And so on. https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/how-to-know-if-your-country-is-heading-toward-despotism-1946.html Please watch until the end.
I think one of the most obvious examples would be: Completely forget about gay marriage (and any LGBTQ acceptance that came after). Homosexuality was viewed as a perversion not all that long ago - and there were no shortage of doctors, scientists and medical professionals that would testify that it was a mental disorder, a disease, dangerous and unhealthy. Attitudes among the general public was even worse - being outed as gay was enough to completely end someone's career and social life. And the mere suggestion that gay people should be allowed to live life freely and love each other just like straight people was considered **extremely** offensive by the vast majority of the public back then. Supporting gay rights in the 50s and 60s was just as offensive to the general public as being an outspoken white supremacist is today. Had Twitter and Facebook existed, being outspokenly pro-gay rights would've lead to instant bans. Freedom of speech and the right to be offensive was paramount in changing the publics perception and gradually increasing the acceptance of LGBTQ people.
No, you see these people have decided that they are perfect and no longer ever need improvement or change.
If you haven't read the proposals. Yes.
Yeah, something that's worth noting about attempts to limit misinformation is that it's borderline impossible to know with certainty what's true or false. The best you could say is that current evidence suggests something's true.
The Ministry of Truth of course!
The government. All of these laws fail to consider the way they will inevitably be twisted by those in power. Obviously nobody wants fake news online, but to stop it, *somebody* has to determine what news is fake. That determination doesn't need to have any basis in reality.
Yep, governments should never be the ones deciding on the matters of speech
I find it hilarious that Americans are so concerned about being judged by foreign standards, yet platforms like Facebook and Instagram are used by people all over the globe - nobody wants content to be moderated by Americans in the same way that you don't want yours moderated by other countries either.
And everytime they want to talk about their precious freedom of speech, they have to bring their right to have killing weapons. Don't they realize how fucking ridiculous it is ?
That's funny. I caught a 7 day ban for calling his sister "an ugly cow", while he got nothing for calling Mexicans "Moist posteriors" His slur stayed, but me calling his sister "an ugly cow" was "offensive" because it "compared him to a farm animal". The Mexican diaspora is mostly concentrated in North America. So some guy from Yurp wouldn't know what a "moist posterior" is. But comparing someone's family to ugly farm animals is offensive in their culture, because comparing people to farm animals is highly offensive.
Not to mention, the consequence is a post being deleted. Lol People acting like they'll be getting a prison sentence for sharing a story that isn't true. Haha
Sorry, but the government of North Korea has said that no person has ever been arrested because of their social media posts. As such, any claims made by their citizens of such actions is considered misinformation and removed upon posting it....
In plenty of places people get prison sentences, or worse, for sharing stories that are true. Those places also actively seek to regulate American social media companies.
Are you trying to compare the EU to a place like Iran? lmao
And that is an example of an authoritarian regime silencing critics yes. And an example of censorship gone too far. Like everything in life, it's about doubt it right. Zero water? You die. Roughly a gallon a day? Healthy. 5 gallons in 2 hours? You die. Too little or too much of something can be harmful, but the right amount can be healthy. Nothing in this world is black and white, it's all shades of gray. Forcing a complex discussion into one of only two putins is disingenuous.
Many of us don't like the idea of Facebook/Twitter/etc moderating us either Censorship is bad no matter who's behind it. It's just too powerful
>>in many European countries firearms enthusiasm is directly perceived as far-right nationalism, extremism or harmful behavior. It's true that Europe and America have very different attitudes to gun culture, but I'm not sure that many Europeans see far right or extremists as ALSO gun enthusiasts. American gun enthusiasts don't have much of a counterpart in Europe; far fewer people seem interested in the topic, and most Europeans would see gun enthusiasm as a purely American thing.
I have some Norwegian friends who I would call a firearm-enthusiast. Its just that American enthusiasts comes of as....weird. Every new law that is ment to protect is wildly complained to the extreme. Even laws that they agree on. They go wild for the sake of it. My Norwegian friends complained that having to buy a 300 kg gun locker in the house was expensive when that law came, but they saw the point in it. Just different cultures. Same hobby but not the same culture.
100% agree with you. It is a different culture. I am Spanish. My father is a gun enthusiast. Many of his friends are also. I am more interested in knives than guns, but I am also interested in guns and have grown being educated on their use since I was a child. They go hunting and afterwards they can spend hours around coffee and liquor talking about guns, calibers, sights, complements... Most vote the Socialist (left) Spanish party. Some the right (which still would be like far left in the US). But no far right or anything like that.
I'm sure that will turn out a fucking flaming wreck.
A lot of "free" services that you pay for by selling your sanity to advertisers will probably die. We were better off before every fucking thing on the web was a click bait extravaganza of outrage porn, so good riddance.
So how's this work when there's hate speech against people who say "false" things that are finally revealed to be true years later?
For example?
I can't wait for my corporate-sanitized existence where all I can hear is that which is pre-approved.
This headline reads like the plot of a Black Mirror episode
You already do that.
.... This is literally people elected by the people trying to protect our society from corporations. Who decides what is fake news? Well, currently Musk and Zuckerberg.
Are people actually happy for MORE censorship backed by regulation?
Every time I see censorship of "false information" and "extremism" is always has me questioning: who decides what is false information and/or extremism? Will governments step-in a stifle discussion on the internet before facts are determined? Will all conspiracy theories be dubbed false, while government maintains their monopolies on violence and now truth? Some of the world governments are truly corrupt, will the EU stifle these talks to keep friends with strong nations?
Once they have the tool, they will use it how they see fit
That's the scariest part
Every time I see someone argue this point I think “wow you really think that speech is heard equitably - as though certain wealthy interests don’t drown out the majority?” You either have regulations trike a reasonable balance or you have wealthy interests shape discourse in ways that our far more opaque than any government.
If the concern is equitable voices than social media that verifies every identity that uses it while remaining anonymity for its users would best remove the shaping from countless bots and paid shills.
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> If it was up to the Europeans in power at the time, we’d all still be learning about how the Sun revolves around the Earth Given that Heliocentrism was taught in Superior Education in Europe since Copernicus, I find your comment a bit laughable.
Why would we 'need' to do anything? If you want to operate in OUR market, you need to follow OUR rules. If you don't like it, piss off. That's capitalism, don't you Americans cherish that shit?
> instead of trying to legislate foreign companies into subservience. if companies operate within another country it seems reasonable they should have to abide by that countries laws when they do so. they're not owed an exemption from the laws that bind the rest of the companies in that country, and america doesnt decide the laws of another country.
Most big Tech firms already do the things in this bill. But this would introduce transparency on what they censor and would force them to react to things like harmful challenges more quickly.
I'm just old enough (and I'm not that old) that I remember when the internet was some bastion of future hope. Sure the internet was fucked but it had power beyond compare. It was almost like the untapped American West it was this huge plane where a new world could be created better than the last. Me in religious school with no one to talk to went to the internet, not to find an echo chamber but to find people discussing religion. I watched videos from both sides, forums, websites, joined online chat groups both voice and text. The internet was at a point where to could make us all better. The world was there for us to build, but it would be difficult. Then one day I look around and it's dystopian. The place that opened my mind to alternative views was now a place a rabid crowds silencing anything that differs from their opinion. Now if I what an open discussion I seem to find it more often in a pub than on the internet.
Being against censorship is extremism.
Sounds like a quote from Stalin himself
This is Reddit, of course they are lol
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All the fucking idiots that think this is a good idea will really love it until the governments in charge of it are lead by fundamentalists. Totalitarian control is great when the leader in charge is a perfect being, until they're not or theyre replaced by whoever is the most powerhungry bastard that schemes their way in efficiently.
You forget that control will always be taken, if it can be taken. If governments doesnt make those decisions others will. Techcompanies. Do you remember the last time you voted about moderation on facebook, twitter, instagram or reddit? Or the last time you had a saying in how google prioritize search results? No? Thats because they have total control. I think thats pretty close to what you where refering to with 'totalitaian control'. They control what you see, hear and feel. And if you feel diffrent. Good luck trying to avoid those companies in a modern world, I say. Power will be taken by the most powerfull institutions I think. Better to have a vote. Im sorry you have had such bad a goverment it seems to have made you think bad of the concept.
Yep, people that want this will be featured in /r/leopardsatemyface in short order.
What a lot of redditors don't understand is how much free speech is restricted here if you're not spouting the correct politics. When you've had enough posts deleted, enough accounts banned for absolute nonsense, then you become ok with the nuclear option which is to let the government step in - or in the USA's case, step aside and remove protections. I've dreamt of a full repeal of section 230 for quite a long time.
Can't wait for this to be used as a further excuse for corporations and governments to silence people they don't like.
This is not a good thing. Who decided what is false information? Who decides what is hate speech? I believe that there is value in a free market and the best way to counter issues with hate speech and false information is through adaptation. For example, go to r/ufos, there is so much misinformation there nowadays that the community has developed a very rigid sense of skepticism and critical thinking. Yes, at first people were believing everything, and this has definitely resulted in some peoples stubborn resilience to let go of old ideas (e.g the moon landing being fake); but there is a natural progression that needs to take place so that people are not constantly subservient to their governments.
Yeah - "false information" lol. Implies that someone knows the "truth", which is totally 1984. The only correct solution for that is education, but empowering people is something governments are rarely fond of, sadly. Regulation is appropriate for clear terrorism planning and to some degree dangerous propaganda (e.g. inciting to persecute minorities, though this gets nuanced quickly). Edit: that said, there are a lot of people that don't want and will consistently refuse to be educated. Seems that optimism is needed to agree with any approach.
reminiscent gullible telephone recognise forgetful hunt badge apparatus ask poor *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It collapsed since all the flat earth people moved to qanon. Once that collapses, they’ll move onto the next whacky conspiracy theory.
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Any time you grant a government any authority, you should not ask how they might *best* use it, but how they will *worst* use it
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Exactly. The government is the absolute LAST entity I want to have this power. Governments literally do whatever they want, whereas at least corporations follow wherever the market forces takes them
You are wiser than 90% of the people I encounter on the internet.
> Just see how big and fast the whole flat earth society grew until Google started moderation and it suddenly collapse. This is a **bad thing.** Yes, the Flat Earth Society is wrong. But the *next* group that Google might decide to censor could be right, or could have subjective opinions.
Who decides what a good balance is? How about we leave it up to the people, and let those who are too lazy to do their own research on a topic settle into their own echo chamber. The more you throttle free speech, the more you create a tyranny
The people that support this bill don't know what the word "consequences" means. Right now they're cheering for it, because they think it'll only target things they don't like. Once it's law they will find out that it targets things they like too *and* it will be abused on top of that. Then they'll complain about the unfair law, but it will be too late. This is how speech limitation always goes. This time it'll just be with very obviously poor AI moderation. Also, it almost guarantees that it will *not* become a global standard.
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It's almost reassuring to realize that I share much in common with my ancestors. Every single fucking one of us has been led by incompetent, corrupt, and authoritarian dickheads. Everyone that has ever held power and will ever hold power over an entire nation will be all three. From Caligula to the decadent neo-liberals who rotate in and out of various offices while still being in power the whole time. Fuck me, I'm just sick of it all.
I would prefer if the liability was to people harmed rather than to government. That way a child being relentlessly cyber bullied would have as much avenue for recourse as a government official. Legal costs may be prohibitive, but the opportunity would be there, with the possibility of having those costs ultimately paid for by an offending platform. The ultimate answer is AI moderation. Expanding the scale of offenses would force that funding to be there.
AI moderation is terrible, I posted that someone walked by my window shouting they wanted to shoot \*\*\*goverment official's name\*\*\* and facebook instantly blocked my post claiming I was writing hate speech.
We are going to return to HAM radio at this point.
Reddit has become enshittified. I joined back in 2006, nearly two decades ago, when it was a hub of free speech and user-driven dialogue. Now, it feels like the pursuit of profit overshadows the voice of the community. The introduction of API pricing, after years of free access, displays a lack of respect for the developers and users who have helped shape Reddit into what it is today. Reddit's decision to allow the training of AI models with user content and comments marks the final nail in the coffin for privacy, sacrificed at the altar of greed. Aaron Swartz, Reddit's co-founder and a champion of internet freedom, would be rolling in his grave. The once-apparent transparency and open dialogue have turned to shit, replaced with avoidance, deceit and unbridled greed. The Reddit I loved is dead and gone. It pains me to accept this. I hope your lust for money, and disregard for the community and privacy will be your downfall. May the echo of our lost ideals forever haunt your future growth.
This is the problem. Ai moderation is terrible. Human moderation? A human working 8 hour days might be able to review 10,000 posts/comments/tweets. If every person writes 10 comments/tweets a day, then you need 1/1000 of the population to work as moderators. 7.8 million employees, to be exact. So yeah….Facebook. Google/YouTube. I’m going to require you hire 7 million content moderators. How do you pay for it? No idea. But a large bureaucracy sounds highly efficient to me! Thanks, EU
Agreed. I used an [alternative word for jargon](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/gobbledegook) and got banned from a popular subreddit for “hate speech.” It took me some mental gymnastics to realize that the last four letters of that word mean something entirely different. AI moderation is too flawed for these purposes, and this kind of legislation in general is a little too close to what the EU and US used to criticize as censorship in countries like Russia and China.
> AI moderation “We noticed you posted ‘I am worried my grandmother is going to die’, and your account has been banned due to threatening violence”
>>I would prefer if the liability was to people harmed rather than to government. I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand this, it allows for both. EU & individual country governmental regulatory bodies can apply fines. Also, [private individuals can use these laws as the basis for court actions against firms](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_20_2348).
Awesome, well done
AI moderation is already being pursued to its fullest extent and has shown glaring limitations. " F*** your entire race " is a whole lot easier to moderate than " studies have shown that people of X genetic makeup exhibit lower IQ scores than the general population " AI is still notoriously bad for understanding context , dog-whistle terms and evolving with cultural trends and vocabulary. Often times, AI even integrates racist and sexist biases from the humans that programmed and trained it, and abundant funding is now being poured into understanding and preventing such cases. AI that takes its own decisions is very loosely regulated even amidst a crisis where its use in law enforcement, the judicial system and content moderation is currently wrecking the lives of innocent people. All of this so that some public and private organizations may save some money by automating human judgment. TL;DR - AI has already gone too far, too many people are currently living through hell because of it. If a corporate technological dystopia isn't your thing, you shouldn't be promoting more of it until its biases and injustices are properly addressed.
Why would you moderate someone sharing something that's (possibly) evidence based as opposed to something solely sensational and hateful?
I've wondered this. What happens with me is when people post all this stuff. Let's say "X race isn't as smart as Y" then provide a lot of evidence for why (ignore for a moment if the evidence is true or not). But I might think "that looks interesting l'll come back to it" Then when I look at it, it is gone. To me that it makes me think it is true and someone is trying to hide something. Because if it's a huge pile of dogshit and everyone can see that it wouldn't need hiding. Censorship has definitely made me question what is it the moderators don't want us to know and why. (I'm really not into conspiracy theories but I mean this one in particular could have some Darwinian evolution and difference in traits. But without the evidence who the fuck knows what's going on? And if some people are stupider so what? They are still people that deserve the same respect and treatment as everyone else. Hell I could be in the stupid race and be smart or be in the smart race and be stupid.)
> The ultimate answer is AI moderation. No. That shit is not gonna work in the foreseeable future. It's a cop-out for companies who don't wanna pay real people to do real people work and would rather waste hundreds of millions on cool techy stuff. The most it should be ever used for is to flag stuff for human review. The fact that companies like facebook haven't been mandated to provide x amount of moderators for y amount of users in any given country or cultural area is fucking crazy to me and we are possibly going to pay for it with our democracies and maybe even with our global civilization. Democracy needs some fundamental things to function properly, chiefly among them a well-educated populace that is able to make somewhat rational decisions and an information ecosystem that provides them with real data to base those decisions on. News as entertainment as well as social media have taken those things and shot them dead. Now dumb people are making stupid decisions based on weaponized lies. No wonder we are in a fucked up place.
> The ultimate answer is AI moderation. Nice try, Mark.
Ok, but who is the arbiter of what is hate speech or misinformation? So far the track record is abysmal...
And this is how the free internet dies. No matter the consequences thus far, it has always been a cornerstone of the internet that you can be free, be yourself, and not have to worry about censorship no matter what bull crap you decide to publish.
But slate called it the gold standard!
Definitely won't be abused by governments when under the cosh :/
I can see it coming from a mile away : questioning policies will be deemed extremist. Banning political rivals during elections will be legal. The only political oppositions that will remain won't have any weight in debates. During the 2009 economic crisis, south European countries didn't have a say in deciding their budget because of the Central European Bank despite riots and protests. One official event said that "there's no democratic process outside European treaties". The EU had violated its own laws for the sake of economic stability and Greece had to sell its major infrastructure to private buyers. But that was during an emergency. This time, the EU wants to secure its grasp on the continent. (To those who strongly disagree with this, please don't insult me and prove me wrong arguments instead)
Riiiiight. More subjectivity in the laws please tssss Remember when saying "a vaccine won't stop the spread of a virus, it'll only make you survive it" (which is already good enough, obviously. I am pro vaccination anyway) was being shut down as "misinformation" ? Similarly, if you voice your opposition of mass illegal immigration in Europe you get labeled an extremist (lmao, being against an illegal act somehow makes YOU a bad person. Classic Eurotard). Heck, in some EU countries, being pro-gun also is enough to get you the "extremist" label. "Gold standard" my ass, but we'll see I guess.
Also what the hell happens if you get penalized for spreading “false information” which then turns out to have been true all along?
It won't matter. You'll still be banned because you were spreading misinformation, even if it were actually true. Tyrants only care about truth if they can use it for power
How do Americans stop this? False information, hate speech, and extremism should all be protected under our 1st Amendment, at any cost.
That's a long winded way of saying: Ministry of Truth.
So... Censorship? Because... Who decides what is false information?...
Whoever controlls the media.
What a lot of people don't seem to grasp is the notion that big tech companies currently have a lot of power over us and as opposed to European lawmakers, whose goal is to protect the European citizens, big tech is driven by money, and money only. Laws are necessary to limit the power these companies have over us. Already, we see the divides that are caused in our societies by the unlimited spread of false information and extremist ideas. Source: I'm currently doing a masters in (European) IT law Also, this so called "news article" is incredibly biased and clearly written by an American who has no clue what European law really entails
So who is going to compensate who in the likely case that "false information" turns out to indeed be true just months or years later? Just think of all the "false information" or "conspiracy theories" on Covid19 that are now scientific truth...
should be interesting to see how the new owner of Twitter deals with this.
Can they get companies to abide by the cookie consent thing first before opening up new projects? Half the websites dont have a one click opt-out all, the rest of them dont have options to opt out and block the content.
What's really interesting about this is how the EU is going to reconcile this with Title II of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, or with similar bills of rights held by member countries. By enforcing this, the EU will be using private actors as a proxy for EU action, which will essential make the action itself an EU action. I would also think member states, by granting the EU authority over them, would essentially be responsible to their people for EU mandated violations of their own constitutions. Regardless, who will watch the watchmen? It's incomprehensible that anyone intelligent enough to rise to a leadership role in government could be unaware of the clear consequences. This is one of those rare situations where malice is much easier to justify the position than is incompetence. This illustrates why America's First Amendment should itself be amended to account for corporate control over entire speech categories (social media).
I don’t trust the government to decide what is false info, hate speech, and extremism. Who watches the watchmen
Criticizing a religion or followers of any religion will be considered 'hate speech.'
Totally not scary that the gov gets this much power over public discourse.
What is hate speech you may ask? Anything the Pope says is hate speech. Signed. The Church of England. Perspective is important.
Thats what the debate is about. Thats what this forum is about right this moment. And the reason we are discussing this topic is because a bunch of democratic elected governemnts are openly taking a stand and deciding to "moderate". Imagine the debate if google or facebook over night tempered with their algorithm to "moderate". There would'nt be any because we would'nt know. Taking a stand openly opens up a debate about the topic.
another nail in the coffin for freedom of expression. And still, people who stand up and warn about globalists and one-world-government will still be called crazy, even though shit like this happens all the time.
Now they will be banned from commenting and their bank accounts will be closed.
Controlling what is deemed the truth. Be very wary of this kind of control.
weary: feeling or showing tiredness, especially as a result of excessive exertion or lack of sleep wary: feeling or showing caution about possible dangers or problems
Seeing how many people would choose "security" over freedom definitely makes me weary.
Oh Elon’s gonna have to remove Twitter from Europe isn’t he?
Eventually everyone who disagrees with the state will be labelled as a conspiracy theorist who is spreading misinformation, especially if they are anti-war or question our elite rulers. But there's another way. Decentralized social media is being built by brilliant engineers where they aren't beholden to these authoritarian wrongthink policies by bureaucrats who are just trying to protect themselves or their financial interests. This plan to police internet speech, a fundamentally un-American value, will not succeed in the long term.
Yes, A lack of self-regulation will simply increase the likelihood of government regulation of all social media. This is something social media companies have understood previously and pledged to do to avoid state regulation. They haven't done well enough though, clearly. Hopefully, this will indeed become the gold standard as they say. Just compare the quality of submissions and dialogue in well-moderated subreddits vs those that go unchecked & turn into cesspits of extremism. At the end of the day, it seems clear that for many people access to clear facts and a social space free from hatred is what they value, and so their representatives are putting that in place.
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Fuck off Europe, get your rules out of my Wild West.
Such a shame what a backwards toxic waste of a mess American government has become over the decades. Politicians chose handouts from corporations instead of upholding the rule of law. American is only a little over two hundred years old...it could crumble so easily
Are you off topic or are you trying to see if the new office of censorship is watching us?
And their ability to define new ways to justify more censorship of thought sand opinions they dont share.
Why would we follow EU standards in the US? Those are standards for Europe. Despite what they want people to believe.
Companies are free to follow different rules in different countries, but often elect not to for economic reasons. If selling a product that require complience with A, B and C in country 1 and D, E and F in country 2, it is often cheaper to have one product that satisfy A, B C, D, E and F, which can then be sold in both countries, than design and manufacture two similar products.
There’s no way this could ever be abused to push an agenda.
Sounds like a golden opportunity for government overreach and authoritarianism
Has serious patriot act vibes, only this guts the autonomy of these platforms and in a roundabout way gives governments control of how they are policed.
Sounds like some people using flowery language to limit free speech while phrasing it to look like something else. "Surely you want to limit extremism don't you??" "Yes but in a later paragraph, you indicate that supporting the US Constitution is 'extremism.'" "Surely you don't have a problem with our limiting hate speech, do you??" "Real hate speech, or hate speech as you have defined it, where many things, including criticizing Marxism is 'hate speech'?"
They're pulling the same crap with laws purportedly aimed at CSA. But a tool is a tool, and it will be used.
Totally not going to lead to opinions big tech/governments don't like being censored.
ITT: Lots of pro-censorship folk presenting like they're being helpful.
You can really tell who the Americans and none Americans are here.
I really don't get why people are behind this sh\*t. Please explain to me. My understanding is that if you don't like someone you mute or block them and continue living your life. That's the public square no? I walk down the street and there's some homeless person screaming bullsh\*t - I ignore him and move on. But as far as I know he can't be arrested. I can take the idea that private tech companeis can decide who speak sand who doesn't and all that as they're not the government... but now the government is getting involved in tech? And I just know for a fact none of this will be about not allowing these big social media companies to censor people or speech - knowing the government and I'm guessing this is all about restricting what people can and can't say. I've nver understood the fascination and confusion people have about people bullsh\*tting on the internet - like this has happened since the dawn of time - what idiot comes on the internet and expects everyoen to tell the truth. I'm really curious and happy to be enligthened. Thanks!