The EU can ban X and Facebook, and Poland should strive for it
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I don't think it's a bad plan, but I believe a good first step would be to close all government accounts on Twitter and open them on Mastodon instead. I'm talking about all levels of administration within the EU27. The impact on journalists, the press, reporters, and others would be massive.
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Speaking as an American, it would also be awesome if the fediverse explodes in Europe, and the dominant topics/discussions shift to EU focused ones.
I’d certainly love this. I’ve blocked all American(-focused) communities to achieve this already. Honestly, I often feel Dutch people know more about US internal politics than those of the EU or even the Netherlands, and I’ve myself gotten a bit sick of 80% of the news I see being about America (even in traditional media I feel America takes up way too much space).
I think in our media America should have a presence a bit bigger than China.
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My main 'traditional media' (newspapers, news broadcasts) are all Dutch and German language. Like I said, even there there's too much of a focus on America.
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Twitter isn't even that popular in Europe, but there's absolutely no, not even the smallest chance it'll get banned.
Politicians seem to be the only ones using it. Works great as an containment area.
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Politicians seem to be the only ones using it. Works great as an containment area.
Yeah, it ssems those tweets are not for the people, but for the media who can screenshot it and make a half-assed article about it.
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I hope more "Americans" (*) reading this would take it to their heart and check what they're posting, commenting, and up/ down voting. Change starts from ourselves.
(*) Americans is a term I am not comfortable with, but there's no alternative, right? I am from South America and always pissed me a bit that up there they are "the Americans". Is like the argument over the Gulf... only that it was never discussed
On that, I think it took an extreme, real caricature to make me more cognizant of that. Like, it’s mind boggling that some are cheering on the Gulf renaming, but I guess it’s a microcosm of what’s been going on for a long time.
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And TikTok, please, while we're at it.
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"DEW IT"
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I don't think it's a bad plan, but I believe a good first step would be to close all government accounts on Twitter and open them on Mastodon instead. I'm talking about all levels of administration within the EU27. The impact on journalists, the press, reporters, and others would be massive.
Each country should at the very least have an instance on it e.g. the BBC has one.
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::: spoiler English auto-translation (via Firefox)
The EU can ban X and Facebook, and Poland should strive for it
Lukasz Lachecki
Ban X would be a good start to anti-Musk counter-offensive. Thierry Breton, former Internal Market Commissioner for the European Commission, said in January, it is “legally possible”.
When last week we watched the spectacle that the American administration prepared for the president of Ukraine in the White House, there were conscious voices that our – i.e. European – priority does not necessarily have to be to choose the most pleasant patron of the threes of the USA, China or Russia. Instead, we should develop a way to reduce Facebook and X’s self-will in the European Union.
Jacek K put it more precisely. Sokołowski, author of last year's book Transnaród. Poles in search of the political form he wrote (on X): “The current state of Fejsbuk and Twitter is that all this shit would be best in Europe.”
And it is not about the “censorship” whose declaration was tried to force on Magdalena Biejat Bogdan Rymanowski, nor about the restoration of standards or hard-acting, protracted negotiations. Rather, it is about immediately limiting the activities of foreign agents – and this is known to be a position that connects over divisions.
Tango with a phalanx (and the cottage)
As a user of both services, I can add some observation to Sokołowski’s observations. X seemed to be a platform dominated by pornbots and accounts funded by the FSB long before Elon Musk actively joined the AfD campaign and every next J.D. performance. Vance wiping his mouth with freedom of speech only accelerated the transformation of the service into a dysfunctional, glazing base of anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
On Facebook, it’s a little bit funnier – generated by artificial intelligence, touching photos of non-existent centenarians baking bread, farmers with a Kharkonium and older men waiting for a suspended dinner get thousands of likes and supporting comments. The graphics often hidden behind the “independent” farms of religious trolls and retired groups, whose role in the service was reinforced a few years ago, is just a prelude to the propaganda brainwashing that awaits us in the months leading up to the presidential election.
So X supports angry young people, Facebook – the autumn of life, making users still (and only seemingly) unrelated to politics. But – and here let’s quote Sokołowski again – it’s not that every voice has a meaning: “You are stupid and without it. Soszials are there to fool the political elite and decision-makers, so that they believe that what they see in the soshrooms are theirs, and that there is no other world outside the soszły.
In order for policymakers to believe that the world exists exclusively on social media, they cannot be marginalized by these media. If Musk had cut Tusk’s reach overnight, the whole scam behind the former Twitter would have become transparent and had the system mechanisms looked at. That’s why the Prime Minister is so far enjoying the relative sympathy of the American algorithm, spins popular, funny rolls on X and TikTok and the scouts of his subordinates for not being eagerly to talk about the contemporary Joseph Goebbels website.
“It is unacceptable for a politician not to have his social media today,” said KO politicians from the boss, who lives in an illusion similar to the hero of an old joke that stands in front of a vending machine with drinks, throws more coins and can’t move away from the machine, shouting to the hurricating people lining up in the queue: “You’ve gone crazy? I still win!” The feeling that Tusk, Myrcha and Sikorski can “play” an algorithm is completely narcissistic and naive.
Nevertheless, it continues and drives Polish politicians, who are less and less convening press conferences and are not too worried about relations with the media – even if they were financed from the State Treasury. It is not known why we have to learn about the actions of the Polish authorities through a private American company managed by a fascist car dealer. Looking at the current state of diplomatic relations – I might as well look for reports on the Polish rule of law on Weibo.
Act of Disobedience to the Act
While almost everyone realized that the recent announcement of changes to Facebook’s moderation was a tribute to Mark Zuckerberg’s new American ruler, there was rarely information about his actual denial of the provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in the European Union only a year ago, on February 17, 2024.
The document was adopted, among others, in response to at least well-known examples of users since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, influencing the results of democratic elections, child abuse and lynching. Not without significance was that the European Council voted on the adoption of the DSA in October 2022 – after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The aim of the provisions contained in the DSA was, among others, to counteract social risks, to strengthen supervision, to combat illegal content, traceability of entrepreneurs and to implement transparency measures. It takes about 10 minutes in any social media to find evidence that “deregulation” in this respect on any U.S. service has completely gotten out of hand.
Jim Stewartson, an American podcaster, says Europe should block all Musk companies operating on our continent. This would probably mean a legislative and diplomatic route through the torment, but banning X could be a good start to a beautiful adventure. Thierry Breton, former Commissioner for Internal Market at the European Commission, said in January, to block X is “legally possible”.
Order the Order
The Brazilian Supreme Court took advantage of a similar opportunity, introducing blockade X last year, after many months of tensions between the country’s authorities and the platform, caused, among others, by the role of the X in the winding up of the riots after the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro in the presidential election. Unfortunately, the ban lasted just over a month – but for trying to circumvent it, the platform paid a $5.2 million fine. Probably not much, but still more than Google will put on financing the science of artificial intelligence for Poles in the next five years.
Will the Poles love it?
Of course, the decision to go to war with Musk and his platform will not entail only enthusiasticly set for the ban of millions who will unite and start playing to the goal of the EU instead of going on the leash of the richest man in the world. The resistance would be great – and supported by the propaganda machine of the platforms themselves.
Mentzen, Fogiel and Giertych, like Tusk, are convinced that in this race they have forums due to their perspicacity, charisma and brilliant strategies, and their voters are eager to sip a spin on “freedom of speech”, “censorship” and “eurocolk”. However, slightly less detached politicians and politicians should start to point out that it is a fixed-sum game in which a slot machine with cans wields and program businessmen close to the hostile European president of the United States.
Perhaps it is worth thanking Jarosław Kaczyński that he has anointed a beautiful mind for his candidate for president, which even algorithms may not help, and wait with building an anti-Musk coalition with Germany, France or Sweden until the period after the presidential elections, which a possible offensive would undoubtedly influence.
However, avoiding discussion on this topic would deprive Poland of one of the best opportunities to deepen integration at the European level in the new situation in international politics. Both the candidate Trzaskowski, the former Minister of Administration and Digitization, as well as the current head of the ministry responsible for digitization, certainly understand that this is a solution that does not require monstrous costs, as in the case of turbo-acceleration in the arms race, but protecting us from the fascist cyberthree, which will otherwise undoubtedly come.
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( @[email protected] Please provide an English translation with future submissions )
I’m sorry about that, next time I will include an English translation.
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