European Union Issues Threat to Twitter About It’s Supposed Lack of Censorship
Jose Nino
|
On June 5, 2023, the European Commission’s vice president of “Values and Transparency,” Věra Jourová took to Twitter to task for leaving the social media code of conduct on disinformation. She proclaimed that the social platform has opted to choose the path of “confrontation.”
“We believe this is a mistake of Twitter. Twitter has chosen the hard way. They chose confrontation,” Jourová said to reporters on June 5.
“This was noticed very much in the Commission and I know the code is voluntary, but make no mistake, by leaving the code Twitter has attracted a lot of attention and its actions and compliance with EU law will be scrutinized vigorously and urgently.”
She stated that the Big Tech giant will be compelled to comply with the EU’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), which will go into effect on August 25.
“If Twitter wants to operate and make money in the European market, it will have to comply with the Digital Services Act,” Jourová declared.
“A lot of people working at Twitter had collaborated with us…It’s sad. Twitter had very competent and determined [employees] who understood that there must be a certain responsibility, a reinforced responsibility on the part of platforms.”
By leaving the code, Twitter no longer has to participate in the new voluntary labeling system that singles out content generated by generative AI. The labeling system has the goal of fighting “misinformation.”
“I said many times that we have the main task to protect the freedom of speech, but when it comes to AI production, I don’t see any right for the machines to have the freedom of speech,” Jourová stated.
The EU is an anti-freedom political entity through and through. Any freedom lover and nationalist across the pond should be skeptical of its machinations. As Americans, despite the increasingly chaotic state of our politics, we should be thankful that we still live in a polity where certain civil liberties such as free speech have much stronger protections.
Other areas, like the EU especially, are littered with all manner of hate speech laws.
For now, Americans can breathe a sigh of relief that such anti-freedom legislation has not been codified into law.
However that could change if Americans get caught asleep at the wheel.
Share: