Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
1–10 of 386 posts
Re: Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
#2As a country that has suffered the turmoil of both Nazism and Communism, it would be wise to heed their direction. They know the smell of tyranny all too well. The proverbial canary.
Re: Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
#3Oh that’s stupid. Companies will end up with some creative solutions - if it can not be removed it can be made hard to access. Honestly it looks like stupid people in power are sad that their antiLGBT posts are removed.
Re: Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
#4I am wondering how will this version of the e-court function in practice.
The existing e-court is an amazing tool for removing the most obvious cases from the system, and the way it works is that any party can at any time raise objection, which can literally be two words - "I object" signed mr. X and the case falls back to regular proceedings. Then of course most cases finish without such an objection and voila - the system gets extra magical throughput. The power of defaults.
Looks like they want to not have the fallback here? Otherwise it is certainly impossible to resolve a case in 7 days.
Might not matter in the end as corpos will likely just comply.
Re: Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
#5> Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed to remove content or block accounts if the content on them does not break Polish law.
This is kind of insane.
So if I offer a free website- a private company operating as I like- I would be forbidden from removing content from my own website that I don't like because the person who wrote it- again, not a paying customer- wants it to be there. Not only does that person have free speech, but I have to foot the bill for them to promote their free speech.
> does not break Polish law
This is the real key piece. Poland's government can just ban saying anything that goes against their own viewpoints. Now their supporters can't have their comments removed, and their detractors will.
Re: Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
#6I hope this will be taken up by the EU. Poland on its own is too small fry for the social Media conglomerate.
Re: Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
#7I expect this type of regulation to be quickly put into place in every jurisdiction that actually believes in the principles of freedom of speech. The most salient part of this article:
> Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed to remove content or block accounts if the content on them does not break Polish law. In the event of removal or blockage, a complaint can be sent to the platform, which will have 24 hours to consider it. Within 48 hours of the decision, the user will be able to file a petition to the court for the return of access. The court will consider complaints within seven days of receipt and the entire process is to be electronic.
As an aside: the excuse that private companies are not the government and "can do whatever they want" is the flimsiest of excuses. If businesses can do whatever they want, then surely all of them can ignore pandemic restrictions and open up if they so choose. And all the regulations already imposed on other privately-held utilities must not matter. And so on.
Clearly big tech companies are the new digital public town square and speech that is not permitted on their platforms might as well not exist. For people to have a useful right to the freedom of speech, these massive platforms do need to be regulated. Perhaps niche networks can go their own route but Twitter and Facebook are bigger than most nations and cannot be allowed to operate without due process.
Re: Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
#8I'm betting on internet balkanization long term. Even in the West, people can't agree on what you can and can't say on social media.
Re: Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
#9Trolling and many other forms of online abuse may not be against any law but it is in the public interest to allow platforms to remove such content.
This initiative may turn out to be the opposite of what it claims to stand for.
Re: Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
#10> Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed to remove content or block accounts if the content on them does not break Polish law. This is kind of insane. So if I offer a free website- a private company operating as I like- I would be forbidden from removing content from my own website that I don't like because the person who wrote it- again, not a paying customer- wants it to be there. Not only…
There is a distinction between website and the quoted "social media services".