I can see it being banned for government communications on varying national levels, but I don't think it should be banned entirely, despite being an awful platform.
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
161 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37727 readers
578 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
One one hand fuck Twitter. On the other k worry the EU might go wild with banning stuff Banning hellsite is good but it'd lead to less good stuff. And help chat control bs in some form
how would it lead to less good stuff?
Sorry, this isnt just about banning twitter because they dont like it. This happening because Twitter is boosting all manner of hate speech, misinformation, disgusting content and calling for violence against vulnerable people. Its an unmoderated far right propoganda hose. Free societies should ban nazi propaganda actually, we know what happens when you tolerate this stuff or brand it as "just another opinion."
Idk why you put “just another opinion” in quotes as if they said that, which they most certainly fucking did not. At best, casually inferring they support nazi propaganda is intellectually bankrupt. At worst, it’s a calculated insult on your part.
Either way, your argument isn’t a good one, because you didn’t even address their argument, you just invented one to disagree with.
I'll rather choose myself which social media platforms I use rather than let the authorities decide for me. Banning things you don't like is not a solution because soon the things you do like are getting banned too because someone else doesn't like them. This is so incredibly narrow sighted.
I think it's important for groups of people to be able to choose to ban propaganda and misinformation, because propaganda is not simply information being imparted, it's an entire ecosystem of deceptive methods to disseminate information and to alter your perception without you realizing.
If it were calling for the EU banning X solely because they don't like Musk's shitty personal opinions, I'd agree with you, but they cite the disinformation, misinformation, and outright propaganda that the platform is being used to spread, and I think that's perfectly valid.
Take 2 scenarios:
5 million actual people telling you that 'x' political view is common and popular, causing you to doubt, or at least temper your own personal beliefs.
500 thousand actual people, plus 4.5 million bot accounts telling you that 'x' political view is common and popular, causing you to doubt, or at least temper your own personal beliefs.
In reality, you don't even need the bot accounts to outnumber the real users if you control the algorithms that determine what people see, which is exactly the situation that X is in right now.
tl;dr This isn't about banning the viewpoints themselves, it's about banning a platform that deceptively alters visibility of viewpoints to manipulate people.
Banning things you don’t like is not a solution
Tell that to Musk; X bans TONS of people over their viewpoints.
5 million actual people telling you that ‘x’ political view is common and popular, causing you to doubt, or at least temper your own personal beliefs.
This isn't misinformation. Lemmy gives you skewed image of what political views are popular. Truth social does the exact same thing but from the opposite perspective. These are just groups of people self selecting onto platforms they most feel comfortable at. Having different political views to that of yours is not misinformation and platforms shouldn't be banned because of it.
Tell that to Musk; X bans TONS of people over their viewpoints.
Again, not in any way exclusive to twitter. Go take a look at lemmy.ml/modlog for example. These are both privately owned and the people running them are free to moderate however they desire. If you don't agree with it, then don't go there. That's what I do with .ml instances too.
This isn’t misinformation.
Right, the other example is. The whole point is the difference between propaganda (the bots) and legitimate political sentiment (all real people). Given that Musk is actively choosing not to combat misinformation bots on his platform, it's fair to step in.
The other is the same thing said differently. Not misinformation either.
No, bots are not real people, so them masquerading as real people holding an opinion is, by definition, misinformation.
Name a social media platform without bots pretending to be real people.
Probably none. Now I'll name one that is large and influential, and isn't trying to combat the problem: X
good; it should be banned; it's not a social media outlet it's a propaganda wing for a fascist regime.
change.org isn't going to do much, and the EU already has an ongoing lawsuit with Twitter regarding its disinformation promotion.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_6709
It could be argued that the EU prosecutors should speed things up, though.
I am afraid they already did:
~~Commission concludes that online social networking service of X should not be designated under the Digital Markets Act -- (October 2024)~~ Please see the comment by @[email protected], I am mistaken here.
I would have loved to see the initiators to go the official way for the petition as I agree that change.org won't change much. Here we go: https://commission.europa.eu/get-involved/engage-eu-policymaking/petition-eu_en
The DMA has no bearing on disinfo, it's about access, like mandating a public API to federate with or banning self-preferencing with other products.
The disinfo thing is regulated by the DSA - Digital Services Act, and it very much applies to Twitter.
I don't like Twitter, but I am also not for banning a service or application nationwide. This should be the choice of the user. Do not take away freedom of choice, regardless of your feelings, believes or what you like. Do not be like China or Russia.
Instead fight against the actual problem, like disinformation or whatever it is. I'm absolutely against such a ban.
...banning a service or application nationwide.
I'm absolutely against such a ban.
Good thing you're not going to be affected by such a ban, seen as no European would have made the mistake of saying 'nationwide' in reference to the EU as a whole. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Should people also have the freedom of choice to buy snake oil that claims to cure cancer, etc? The opposite of freedom is not regulation. That's a bunch of propaganda used by people when they want to change an inconvenient topic. It's used, for example, when talking about the ACA and claiming that nationalized health insurance would rob the people of choosing their blood sucking middle man for health insurance.
Are you defending snake oil? The pseudoscience con so uniquituously used to deprive the desperate from their money that it became the term used to describe "harmful bullshit sold for profit?"
Freedom of choice or not, I suppose you should be able to spend your money however you want.
But if someone is selling people lies under the promise of medical miracles, we need to throw the book at them.
Are you
No.
spend your money however you want
Big fan of the Citizens United decision and money in politics, I take it?
Ah, I'm still waking up, so I must have misunderstood.
I hadn't considered political spending, but I didn't get the impression we were talking about super PACs. Those are abhorrent, and undemocratic.
My stance was that if a person wants to buy something that's stupid, ineffective, but gives them some small degree of hope and doesn't harm others, then they should be able to. However, I'm also of the opinion that regulators need to remove those products from the market because they're lying to people about their efficacy.
Ideally we'd be teaching people that snake oil doesn't work. But the current political climate suggests that Big Snake Oil has captured the regulation, so I don't see that happening either.
How is that even remotely equivalent comparison?
Isn't blocking a disinfo place a way of fighting disinformation? I don't get it
Blocking an entire community, service or application blocks access to non disinformation and normal communication too. Instead fight against the specific issues. Or with your logic we need to ban every platform such as Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Discord and even Wikipedia. Because misinformation is everywhere.
I don't want anyone decide for myself what to use. If I want to use Twitter, that should be MY decision, not yours, not the one with the campaign here and certainly not any government.
we need to ban every platform such as Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Discord
Now you're talking.
And Lemmy, Mastodon, Bluesky etc.
Posting on the fediverse I sort of want to exempt those, but Bluesky can get in the sea too, yeah.
So you want to ban the platforms you dont like/use but leave the ones you do?
No, I use only the platforms I wouldn't want to see get lost eventually. But I see your attempt at a rhetorical gotcha, and I want to recognise that, too.
Every service may be abused to spread misinformation. Here, the complaint isn't that people abuse a service against the owner's will, but that the service is operated to spread misinformation.
One way to address this could be to look at moderation. Is there meaningful moderation to limit misinformation? A service operated to spread misinformation wouldn't moderate it.
I imagine that Twitter being blocked in Europe might actually lead to some of those sources moving elsewhere to continue to reach their audience. I'm not a big fan of blocking websites either in a general sense, but a I can see why countries would want to avoid having what's happening to the US be repeated within their own borders, and that seems to be a distinct danger with Twitter. There's a pretty good argument to be made that that's literally its purpose at this point.
Dismantling legitimate governments with disinformation seems like a pretty viable power grab strategy for billionaires trying to create a megacorp hellscape where they get to do whatever they want until the planet becomes uninhabitable for humans some time after their own deaths.
There needs to be due process. We can't ban a website because 10k people said it has disinformation. The DSA is the process for combatting disinformation on major platforms, and we should follow it. Twitter is already being sued under the DSA, and they will be banned in the next few months if they do not fulfill their obligations to fight disinformation.
Sure, that's fine - except I guess a petition is a petition. It's not binding, it's a way of expressing political will. So if a lot of people go sign it I don't see what the problem is? It's a nice way of shitting on musks neck, rubbing some in his mouth and nose. I guess we should all sign
Is there no disinformation on other social media platforms?
I don't know. That isn't the point though, is it?
It had long since hit critical mass in Europe before it was bait and switched to serve as a US fascist tool of propaganda. Banning it is the correct response.
except it's literally state sponsored propaganda.
Can non Europeans sign ?
I hope not.
Well I just did, it's on charge.org and I'm Australian
This is stupid. People not living in that country should not be able to decide. It's like Russian people would decide what I can access and not in my country... Sorry not being personal here, I just find this is wrong. I am not taking your rights way if you have the right to apply, just saying my opinion.
People living in other countries aren’t deciding. It’s a change.org petition, it doesn’t mean shit.
This is stupid. People not living in that country should not be able to decide.
It's a change.org petition .... it's not going to decide anything.
That's not the point. The point is that people not living here wants to change things they are not affected by. I'm not trying to change the USA too, because I don't live there. I mean that by principle. Edit: And for clarification, I didn't insult the person I was responding to. I meant the concept is stupid, not the person.
The EU is not a country. I thought this was basic stuff.
Also its a change.org thing, nothing official. It will just show interest at best
I'm surprised this was understood wrongly. If the EU blocks it EU wide, then it is blocked country/nation wide in my country. I never said EU is a country. But discussion about these language stuff just takes away from the actual problem and topic of the issue I was talking about. But if that is the important stuff you guys want to talk about, well go ahead.
And it does not matter if this is official or not for what I was talking about. People who don't live in my country should not decide what access I should have.
What are the chances of this actually happening, Europeans? GDPR did, so it doesn't seem impossible, but this is a lot more targeted at one specific company.
There's also the fact he's now close the the new American strongman, and they don't want to piss off America.