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Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

ec.europa.eu

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Re: Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

#111

Post by lispm »

logicchains wrote: post #102
exceptione wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please realize that the anti-vaccine nonsense is content driven by hostile regimes, ie China and Russia. I will give you some links: - https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-china-covid-disinformation-ca... - https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/foreign-disinformation-... - https://www.politico.eu/article/antivax-conspiracy-lean-pro-...

Who said anything about vaccines? Some European countries have been penalising people for entirely organic anti-immigration sentiments.

European countries are under attack by the Russian regime, if you missed it. Immigration was and is used as a weapon to destabilize European countries. Russia was/is financing immigration hostile parties and organizations in Europe.

An example:

https://www.dw.com/en/poland-says-belarus-russia-behind-new-...

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/09/22/le-pen-s...

Because of the Russian war against the Ukraine, Europe currently hosts millions (> 4 million) of additional refugees.

Re: Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

#112

Post by somenameforme »

andylynch wrote: post #61
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but can this joke itself be illegal? What law forbids a joke like this? It's not calling for violence, it's not denying the holocaust (just the opposite), it's just.. well.. a joke.

It’s absolutely inciting violence, just using coded language.

Even the EU is going to have some legal standards around this sort of thing, or you could spin whatever you want into being some sort of coded language for something that is illegal. I'm unfamiliar with EU (or Germany as it may be?) standards, but using the US as an example, there's the Miller Test [1] for determining obscenity. It has three parts:

---

1) Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest

2) Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law

3) Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

---

Something can only be deemed obscene if it meets all 3 criteria, which courts tend to interpret pretty rigidly. For instance, an average person is not the most sensitive or politically correct person. Of course it also somewhat amusingly emphasizes the cultural differences. Creative use of a nipple and some mayonnaise might be deemed as obscenity, while a graphic decapitation could not.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test

Re: Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

#113

Post by RandomLensman »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #110
jltsiren wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the US approach to free speech works that well in practice. Political polarization has become worse in the US than in most other developed countries, and that looks like a consequence of free speech. When you value free speech far above social harmony, you give a lot of power to extremists of all kinds.

It is better to go through a phase like this than live in a country where you're not allowed to speak freely. This is the cost of being free, not everyone likes it, but it way better than the alternative.

On what basis are the US limits to speech better than the European ones? The US is arguably a more violent society now - is that the better part? The GDP per capita being higher? The trade-off between the two?

Re: Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

#114

Post by exceptione »

logicchains wrote: post #102
exceptione wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please realize that the anti-vaccine nonsense is content driven by hostile regimes, ie China and Russia. I will give you some links: - https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-china-covid-disinformation-ca... - https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/foreign-disinformation-... - https://www.politico.eu/article/antivax-conspiracy-lean-pro-...

Who said anything about vaccines? Some European countries have been penalising people for entirely organic anti-immigration sentiments.

I have never heard of people being "penalized". If you violate the law, for example by discriminating someone, you can get a penalty indeed.

You can have all your "anti-immigration sentiments", but you are not going to be penalized. You can be completely opposed against immigration, and if you have some good arguments, you can calmly post them anywhere. I fear that "sentiment" is doing a lot of work here.

Besides: what looks like organic in extremist circles is often not. You start with a business model and you will gather a herd. You just have to feed them.

Re: Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

#115

Post by Hamuko »

spookie wrote: post #82
Hamuko wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It simply works. Does it? Because I've seen it used to spread all sorts of bullshit, including against Musk/X. One case that comes to my mind when Musk wanted to make blocking to work the same as muting, and the false claim of it being against Apple's App Store rules was added as context.

In what way does blocking not work the same as muting?

If you mute a user, you will not see posts from that user but they can see and interact with your posts. If you block a user, you will not see posts from that user and they cannot see or interact with your posts.

Re: Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

#116

Post by whywhywhywhy »

threeseed wrote: post #8

Interesting that it is timed with the recent launch of Threads in EU. Will definitely establish a compliance benchmark for X. But the big problem for X is that Musk burned so many bridges with fired employees that the list of whistleblowers for any issues will be endless.

How will they whistleblow against him if he fired them in the first week before he did anything?

Re: Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

#117

Post by somenameforme »

troupo wrote: post #80
kypro wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're critical of X allowing people to recite jokes about the holocaust, how do you feel about Netflix platforming similar jokes about genocides? ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJurYs12ay4 ) Do you feel some jokes are too offensive to be said? Do you feel the EU/UK are correct in their stance that offensive (aka hateful) jokes should be illegal?

"It was just a joke" isn't a legal defence when inciting hatred and violence. It's not legal even in the US (though IANAL). Context matters .

The Supreme Court almost always judges in favor in free speech, including justices like Sotomayor. A place this frequently comes up is in rap where rappers frequently tend to rap about specific people and propose or fantasize about violent acts and even murder being committed against them. Eminem and his ex-wife Kim is a more or less well known example. And the Supreme Court has ruled, repeatedly, that it's 100% legal. A relevant court case is Elonis vs US [1]. He said some extremely explicit and provocative things, and the court ruled 8-1 in favor of throwing out his conviction. Interestingly enough, the sole dissenting vote was Clarence Thomas!

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonis_v._United_States

Re: Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

#118

Post by troupo »

pseudo0 wrote: post #97
troupo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It was just a joke" isn't a legal defence when inciting hatred and violence. It's not legal even in the US (though IANAL). Context matters .

It is legal in the US as long as you are not intending and likely to incite imminent lawless action. Eg. To give a recent example, it's completely legal to chant "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" despite some interpreting that chant to be calling for genocide. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/advocacy_of_illegal_action

Yeah, that's why I'm saying context matters, and it's often up to the court to decide the context

Re: Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

#119

Post by wongarsu »

rsynnott wrote: post #86
wongarsu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't inciting violence, and despite what people say about Germans we haven't actually outlawed humor. The joke might be tasteless or insensitive, but I doubt it's illegal. Of course many platforms wouldn't want such content on their platform, but there is also a vocal portion of people who have long called for platforms to behave more like town halls or public plazas, letting public discourse run uncensored as lo…

Oh, I’m not saying it’s illegal anywhere (maybe France? France is particularly aggressive on this sort of thing), but I would imagine that some Twitter salespeople will be having _interesting_ conversations with remaining large advertisers about this; it doesn’t really gel with previous positioning (at least to advertisers).

Musk didn't buy the company to make it gel with its previous positioning, for better or for worse. But I agree, it will be interesting if Twitter manages to retain any of the large advertisers, and if how they plan to become profitable again.

Re: Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

#120

Post by ExoticPearTree »

RandomLensman wrote: post #113
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is better to go through a phase like this than live in a country where you're not allowed to speak freely. This is the cost of being free, not everyone likes it, but it way better than the alternative.

On what basis are the US limits to speech better than the European ones? The US is arguably a more violent society now - is that the better part? The GDP per capita being higher? The trade-off between the two?

On the fact that you're investigated because you hold certain beliefs or say something that the party currently holding power doesn't like.

I don't think it is a more violent society. Maybe in the discourse, but not in actual crime. And yes, people are more polarized, but I think it is tied more to the economic context than anything else.

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