Posted on 01/11/2021 4:43:57 PM PST by blam
Germany and France are shocked over Twitter’s decision to permanently ban President Trump from the platform, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying through a spokesman that lawmakers should set rules governing free speech, not private technology companies.
“The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic,” said chief spokesman Steffen Siebert during a Berlin press conference, according to Bloomberg. Siebert added that rights like freedom of speech “can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature — not according to a corporate decision.”
Meanwhile, French leaders are similarly outraged – with Junior Minister for European Union Affairs, Clement Beaune, saying he was “shocked” that a private company made such an important decision.
“This should be decided by citizens, not by a CEO,” Beaune told Bloomberg TV in a Monday interview, adding “There needs to be public regulation of big online platforms.”
Earlier, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, said that the state should be responsible for regulations, not “the digital oligarchy,” adding that big tech is “one of the threats” to democracy.
Europe is increasingly pushing back against the growing influence of big technology companies. The EU is currently in the process of setting up regulation that could give the bloc power to split up platforms if they don’t comply with rules.
Twitter permanently banned Trump last week after it decided the outgoing president’s tweets breached its rules against gloriyfing violence. It cited his posts on the riots in the U.S. capital.
The move followed similar action by Facebook. Founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said Trump’s most recent posts showed he intended to use his remaining time in office to undermine a peaceful and lawful transition of power. –Bloomberg
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at nationandstate.com ...
Good.
Yes, wait until it happens to Frau Merkel.
If big tech can shut down a sitting US president they can sure shut down Merrile and Macron. Maybe they are not like it where this coup is going (even if they had a hand in it) and what it means for themselves.
Torn on this.
It seems to upshot here is that governments should control these platforms and not private companies.
But as we all know, the lines between private companies and government get more blurred with each passing day.
(fixed Merkel's name)
Using a very creative interpretation of violence ! And while leaving up actual violent threats !!!
Is there not one honest democrat in congress?!?
I wonder if it would get it through the Twitter owner’s thick, partisan skull, if both Germany and France decided to suspend twitter in their countries for the time being?
What would be neat to see: an invasion of Menlo Park (Suckerberg) and San Fransicko (Jerk Dorsey) by Frau Merkel and German commandos. If they focused strictly on Fakebook and Twitter, I, for one, would applaud them!
The Chinese will be storming the California beaches before that.
They are sad to lose such entertainment and must now go back to watching soccer and handball.
They won’t need to invade Menlo Park, however entertaining that would be.
They’ll just fine them and block them for it, which will be much better...since they love those Euros even more
They are also shocked at how widespread voter fraud is in American elections and the Democrats opposition to voter IDs but you wont’ read any of that in the US press.
The internet as a unified network was done on American infrastructure, and everyone went along with it because the American government and telecoms were content to leave people alone to do their business as they saw fit.
The hysterics that Silicon Valley has shown and the fact that social media has blatantly been exposed as being a proxy arm of the American Intelligence Services, especially after the Arab Spring, has made a lot of people nervous.
We could very well see the internet fragment into segregated regional and national networks as a means of national security policy given how Silicon Valley is running amok.
When the Germans are shocked at something like this that tells you just how wrong fakebook and tweeter are....spelling intentional.
One has a staged event in its history to justify targetting Jews. And the other has the storming of a political citadel as a national refrain. Macaroni and Snorkel
I agree with everything in your post. I find the portion that I excerpted above prophetic. I believe that the internet will fragment and that blocks of countries will start forcing traffic between these country blocks to be restricted and filtered.
Some bad things, but also many good things could come out of decentralizing many areas of the web. Eg, google & twitter & FB finally either being split up in anti-Trust actions, and/or seeing the advent of thriving competitors to each of those monopolies.
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