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Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

ec.europa.eu

131–140 of 141 posts

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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European countries have a history of assimilating anti-establishment parties into the establishment. They did it with revolutionary communists, they did it with the green movement, and now they are doing it with the conservative nationalist / right-wing populist / whatever parties. The Finnish equivalent of the AfD is in a coalition government led by the traditional center-right party. In Sweden, the corresponding pa…

I think here you're talking more about what eventually will happen, while your earlier comment (and the one I was responding to), is more about what is happening. The fact that the polarization may end up playing out better than in the US (though the situation in Germany as of yet gives no indications of that) is a different issue than the fact that there is an undeniably sharp rise in polarization, even in places wi…

In my experience, polarization has been in decline in Europe for a few years. It started rising in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the refugee crisis, but the farce around Brexit and the Russian invasion of Ukraine tempered it. People are again willing to work within the system rather than trying to replace it with something radically different.

Germany is a bit of a special case due to their history. They still can't cope with anything that looks even remotely similar to fascism.

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

#132
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that the European Commission[1,2] is a big part of the executive branch of the EU, yeah? (The other one being the european council). So if there is something as an "EU government", it is the commission. [1] https://commission.europa.eu/index_en [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission

The European Commission is not elected by EU citizens btw.

I know. The same holds true for the German government.

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you looked at homicide figures, for example? Europe around 3 per 100k (EU below 2), US above 6. The party thing was in the Eastern bloc, not sure where that is now the case.

I would say having access to guns in the US makes killing someone much easier than in the EU where most countries banned guns, making murders much harder to commit with a knife or a blunt object.

But this aside, did the murder rates increase in the last 10-20 years, decreased or is it the same?

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

#134

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?

Because he didn't fire everyone in the first week.

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

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked at homicide figures, for example? Europe around 3 per 100k (EU below 2), US above 6. The party thing was in the Eastern bloc, not sure where that is now the case.

I would say having access to guns in the US makes killing someone much easier than in the EU where most countries banned guns, making murders much harder to commit with a knife or a blunt object. But this aside, did the murder rates increase in the last 10-20 years, decreased or is it the same?

Switzerland has a lot of guns but a homicide rate below 1 per 100k, it is not necessarily the guns as such.

US rate is a little bit up from early 2010s, but a lot lower than in the 1980s, in the EU the rate was low in the early 2020s compared to the previous ten years.

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

#136
post #20

Interesting that Community Notes is mentioned, because it's by far the most reliable anti-"disinformation" mechanism I've seen. The "bluecheck" system has been absolutely wrecked, though. Even with the haphazard patching of grey and gold ticks, a bluecheck more often than not is the sign of self-promoted nonsense.

I don't understand why Elon hasn't hijacked Community Notes for his own purposes yet.

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

#137

Disappointing that the vast majority of top levels here are describing the EU as some sort of totalitarian police state. It does respect rights. Do the people in the USA think that every country should let its citizens act like uneducated armed griefers?

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commission-violation-priv... trying to ban end to end encryption is the opposite of respecting rights.

There's the commission and the parliament. The commission comes up with ideas for laws and the parliament says if they're okay or not.

If your government is working properly, there should be a small part of it trying to ban encryption, and a part of it trying to keep encryption legal. It's an adversarial system. Encryption will be an unpopular subject here, so let's talk about zoning instead: a small part of the government should be representing builders by trying to make it legal to build anything anywhere, and a small part should be representing land speculators by trying to make it illegal to build anything anywhere.

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

#138
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is fighting against dark patterns, opaque and arbitrary moderation decisions (among other things) an attack on (your very american conception of) free speech?

They seem largely focused on "illegal content", specifically referencing the Oct 7 attack on Israel: > concerned the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas' terrorist attacks against Israel > The compliance with the DSA obligations related to countering the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, notably in relation to the risk assessment and mitigation measures adopted by X to counter the disse…

Part of the German government is trying to make it illegal to say bad things about Israel.

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

#139
post #52
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having tried the "Added context" contributions, I think Twitter solved the moderation. It simply works. There's an abundance of free labor and it scales linearly with controversy/spread.

But that doesn't remove the content. It just sticks a label underneath it. And it's only on the most popular tweets.

There is a dude who lives a couple miles from me who flies a large confederate flag and has a statue of Robert E Lee in his yard. I am happy that authorities allow it because that way I know not to interact with him. I’d rather offensive people be loud and proud than secretive and using subterfuge to advance their cause.

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think here you're talking more about what eventually will happen, while your earlier comment (and the one I was responding to), is more about what is happening. The fact that the polarization may end up playing out better than in the US (though the situation in Germany as of yet gives no indications of that) is a different issue than the fact that there is an undeniably sharp rise in polarization, even in places wi…

In my experience, polarization has been in decline in Europe for a few years. It started rising in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the refugee crisis, but the farce around Brexit and the Russian invasion of Ukraine tempered it. People are again willing to work within the system rather than trying to replace it with something radically different. Germany is a bit of a special case due to their history. They…

But it's not really "Germany" calling the AfD fascist, in fact ever more Germans are voting for them. Rather the people who don't like them are calling them fascist. You're effectively describing an effect of extreme polarization, where 'the other side' is demonized in ways with, at best, tenuous connections to reality.

I think your post hits on the primary cause of polarization: incompatible ideologies. One group in [some country] want ever more immigrants, regardless of the cost or quality. The other side wants to limit immigration to skilled and educated migrants who are expected to learn the local language and integrate into society. These two sides' views are different enough that it's pretty tough to get a meet in the middle, and the issue is relatively urgent, so you get polarization.

Of course this leads to nasty online conversations where you might have one group talking about the crime rates of new migrants, while the other side calls them racist or fascists for doing such. And I would agree that this probably contributes to polarization, but it's also an effect of an already existing polarization, rather than anything even close to a core cause. Europe's had no difficulty polarizing plenty throughout history, long before the internet. It's just for the past ~80 years we've all been living in a little bubble of relative peace, tranquility, and growth. And I think that bubble has popped.

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