- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4853884
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4853256
To whom it may concern.
You must log in or register to comment.
Ah, a change.org petition . I eagerly await the sweeping improvements to life abroad.
Has any petition here ever actually lead to any change?
Not going to sign it, too. Change.org is part of the problem, and not of the solution.
Just a casual bystander with no clue what’s going on… why’s change.org a problem?
Edit: ok, read more posts, understand now
I couldn’t find any posts talking about it, what’s wrong with it?
It’s like waving a disapproving finger at a brick wall, has always been my criticism.
Protests shouldn’t be so easily tossed in a bin. If you aren’t a problem, then no one has to listen to your message.
Petitions in Europe are required to be discussed when they reach a certain threshold. The platform does not matter.
even if they do nothing about the petition, it still directly shows that people care about the issue. Its just one of the things that ever so slightly could tip the scales in right direction. But yes, if people think that its all done and good by signing the petition and nobody doing anything else, you might as well yell in the wind about it. But there could be people with a bit more influence that want to do this too. Even the surveys dont get information from every single person of the populace so having many signs could help even if they dont have to immidiately put it on effect.
Ew, that sounds bad. I would prefer “promote open twitter-like social media” instead of “ban X” (you can replace X with any other website/software, even FOSS one). No banning should be allowed in EU.
Yeah, keep X on and pile up the multi-million fines if they don’t comply with laws. That’s the only thing companies care about - something eating up their profits.
And if they keep not complying - then ban it altogether, like Brazil did. I prefer to recognize and ban it for the illegal activities it does, not because some folks don’t like it and banded together against it.
They should pass a resolution that all EU member nations shall create official Mastodon and Lemmy instances. Moderators and admins would be actual jobs constrained by the relevant national or EU law.
(Or replace Mastodon and Lemmy with whatever open platforms you deem appropriate)
I like this idea.
Twitter was supposed to be the “online town hall”. And online public spaces are not publicly owned, they’re run by private companies that can ban you at their own whims.
With each country having their own federated platforms, they can truly act as online public spaces where the usual laws apply as they would do offline.
You’d need to employ thousands of moderators though if everyone was online but honestly I think it’s worth it.
But don’t be handing out prison sentences for posting stupid shit. Online harassment and calls for violence can still be legally handled the same way they are offline, but jailing people for offensive jokes and stupid hot takes is just idiotic.
Best way is temporary bans increasing exponentially in length, then small percentage of income fines again increasing exponentially.
Also, and I’d argue we already need this, a court system for online crimes. This means the regular court system doesn’t get more workload added on to it and specialist judges and lawyers can be appointed.
I’m okay with this as long as things like general political or religious speech is protected. When you’re punised for speaking against the majority, congratulations you have left/center authoritarianism and it’s no better than fascism in my opinion.
Agreed. Perhaps the best implementation is a highly integrated mix of Mastodon and Lemmy where Mastodon is used for general discussion and news and Lemmy is used for organising communities around subjects like politics and religion.
Op, if you want to submit a petition to the EU, you should use their portal https://www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions/en/home not change.org
Exactly. This is the only correct answer. Change.org petitions are as worthless as a 7 euros banknote.
Corporate nationalist social media like “X” (American oligarchy) and TikTok (Chinese oligarchy) are a danger to the sovereignty and stability of the Western world.
and the reddit Russian psy-op? certainly not helping
I don’t like the idea of governments banning access to a website, unless its like CSAM.
See it more like “preventing a website whose owner refuses to comply withEuropean law from operating in the EU”.
What do you mean by operating in the EU? Twitter is run from America
And it’s fine to continue to operate in the US.
But if it doesn’t abide by EU laws then it can’t operate in the EU.America doesn’t set the worlds laws
I understand each government can have its own regulation about what websites should be accessible. I still don’t understand how Twitter operates in the EU. It’s a part of the world wide web. My understanding of how the internet works is that users reach out to the server, which in twitters case is in the US
Twitter operates servers in the EU. They will have at least Frankfurt server. Probably UK and probably elsewhere.
It’s geographically closer, so reduces latency and server load (faster to complete a request, faster to discard allocated resources).
It also gives redundancy. If Frankfurt DC explodes, the system will fall back to the next closest DC (probably London).So let’s say that the EU DC stops existing. And requests go over the ocean to the US.
Twitter still has customers in the EU. They are still making money from EU citizens. Because twitter isn’t free. It costs money to manage, develop and run. Twitter tries to recoup those costs via adverts and subscription services.
So let’s say that twitter is no longer allowed to extract money from the EU. The EU bans companies advertising on twitter.
Any companies that have business in the EU (like selling to EU citizens) are no longer allowed to advertise on twitter.
Paypal, visa etc is no longer allowed to take payments from EU citizens for twitter services.
Any EU service that has twitter integrations is no longer allowed to charge for twitter features.
Basically, twitter has no way of getting money from the EU.Why would twitter spend money to access the EU population. It’s a cost sink. Dead weight.
There is no growth. Getting 50 million new EU users means a massive cost increase.
Plus paying for that extra load on (say) US based servers, and their international backbone links. (Just because you can reach a server on the other side of the world for “free”, doesn’t mean commercial services can pump terabytes of data internationally for free).So yeh, the servers could stay located in the US where twitter operations HQ is. Twitter could disband their international headquarters, so they no longer have companies in the EU.
But they wouldn’t be able to get any money from EU citizens. And if they tried to circumvent the rules, then they can be blocked by DNS and BGP. So the only way to access twitter is by a VPN.
That didn’t work well in Brazil, and twitter caved in to the demands of the Brazil government.I really appreciate your answer!
In practice, we could sever the connection between EU internet and the rest of the internet.
Maybe whitelist a set of ideas that are allowed to pass through the great eu firewall.
Or maybe, just maybe, fine companies that commit criminal acts.
There really is a fine line between turning into an authoritarian regime and doing basic police work, right?
operate in != run from
If you want an apt example of a company ‘run from’ America not allowed to ‘operate in’ another jurisdiction:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_BrazilI still don’t understand how Twitter operates in other countries. It’s accessible because it’s a part of the world wide web. When people use Twitter are they not reaching out to the servers located in America?
They’re not accessible anymore from a jurisdiction if said jurisdiction which rules they are violating decides to change their networking policies. And because twitter likes to be accessible, twitter decided to comply with the rules eventually. You seem intentionally obtuse btw.
Some thoughts: (1) networks don’t necessarily run according to judicial borders.
(2) you also have to penalize the use of rerouting tools, which Brazil seems to have done.
(3) it became incorrect to refer to it as “world wide web”(1) Agreed of course, but I don’t see much of an issue there. You try to get a 100% coverage on your blockade, but 99% will move twitter to compliance too. same goes for (2). As for (3), I’m not really sure why you directed that at me.
Apparently, it works by fining users that visit the site. See chapter “Blocking”.
How nice, a government that puts criminal penalties on it’s citizens reading the (according to them) wrong things. Banning technologies like VPNs.
fuck CSAM, but where do we draw the line?
let laws regulate society and don’t let government regulate directly.
for example, instead of banning access to X, outlaw the use of Social media in direct advertising. Make the EU market so hostile towards their business practices they can’t legally operate.
then, it’s “X” that refuses to operate within the laws we as a people have required, not just an over-reaching autocrat.
That’s a bad idea because of how reliant small businesses are on social media advertising. A regulation like that would essentially screw over every business that isn’t rich enough to go to bigger advertising venues.
Twitter is not the sole, or even the biggest social media company in Europe. It’s not even in the top 3.
The advertisement sector will be fine.
That’s what I’m trying to say. Losing Twitter isn’t a big deal.
yes… because businesses are more important than democracies…
you know, not that long ago these coverless books existed that came out every day. they had stories, news, even comics in them. and you know what? they even had advertisements in them!
social media is a convenience to business. government is not a social convenience.
Businesses are the ones that produce food, medicine, clothes, build houses, print books, provide gas and electricity, build roads, etc. There are businesses that have outlasted monarchies and democracies. I’m not a corpo schmuck but small businesses are the soul of the soul of our society.
People
Businessesare the ones that produce food, medicine, clothes, build houses, print books, provide gas and electricity, build roads, etc. There are businesses that have outlasted their usefulnessmonarchies and democracies. I’mnota corpo schmuckbutand culture issmall businesses arethe soul of the soul of our society.there, I fixed it.
the purpose of any business is to be profitable, otherwise it’s a charity. businesses have zero philanthropic goals.
people make a business profitable. People make the products and services. People consume the product.
no people, no business.
no government, no people, no business.
don’t let greed cloud your judgement.
Yes a business usually consists of people and is driven by profit, you sted the obvious, but what is your point?
Do people buy their vacuums from Dyson Ltd. or from a guy named Kevin?
It’s not just about profits, it’s about accountability. That’s what the different forms of corporations represent. A singular private person can’t and shouldn’t be held accountable for every product the produce. A business is a layer of protection of limited (Ltd.) accountability. How could anybody be motivated to invent or produce anything if a single miss use of your product that causes any harm (intended or not) could lead to you directly being held responsible and possible going to jail. A business on the other hand usually has limited accountability but is also held to a much higher standard of quality and proof than a private individual ever could.
It’s not just about profits, it’s about accountability. That’s what the different forms of corporations represent. A singular private person can’t and shouldn’t be held accountable for every product the produce. A business is a layer of protection of limited (Ltd.) accountability.
this is laughable. Corporations aren’t being held accountable for anything anymore because they have personhood rights.
How could anybody be motivated to invent or produce anything if a single miss use of your product that causes any harm (intended or not) could lead to you directly being held responsible and possible going to jail.
People invent and produce things every day. You’re confusing yourself with mass production at scale.
A business on the other hand usually has limited accountability but is also held to a much higher standard of quality and proof than a private individual ever could.
no longer the case. a private individual would be put in jail (like you said) for harming one person with a product. who goes to jail when millions are poisoned by a company? Who maintains that standard of quality and proof? The same government that turns a blind eye when millions of Americans are poisoned?
But to get back on topic, People empower the business. Without the people, there is no business.
Business also managed just fine before social media advertising was a thing.
Now I’m imagining what the British East India Company’s Twitter account would look like
That’s true.
Yeah, I don’t think that banning social platforms is a good idea, unless its hosting illegal content. As bad as ““X”” is, banning it could be a slippery slope.
Although, I don’t think this change.org petition will get far.
That’s cool for the EU (probably) but there’s still the other 90% of the world.
It’s short sighted indeed.
If someone told me “I don’t like Musk, I’m going to stop using Twitter”, I’d say “good for you”. I think it’s great when people stand up for their beliefs and put their money where their mouth is.
If someone told me “I don’t like Musk, so you’re not allowed to use Twitter”, I’d tell them to go fuck themselves. It’s none of their business whether they personally like what it is that I want to do as long as I’m not hurting anyone.
Inb4: I’m not a Twitter user and probably never will be, but I believe very strongly in the freedom of expression, even when that means I have to hear things that I don’t like.
I also don’t think banning anything is the way to go. Who don’t want to use X doesn’t have to - there is Reddit, Mastadon, BlueSky and others.
How about “if you don’t like Musk, don’t use X or buy a Tesla?”
I personally don’t really like any billionaires at all, but I’m not going to get in to a hissy fit because someone uses Microsoft Windows or bought something from Amazon.
That’s all well and good, and that’s currently my policy.
But that’s an entirely different discussion than whether banning a certain propaganda platform is worth doing and would cause the intended results.
The first thought that comes to my mind is that the people in Twitter are just going to migrate to another social network. It won’t be problem solved, it’ll be problem moved.
The second thought I have is the amount of hate and comments full of misinformation on sites like Facebook. Should we ban Facebook too? And if so, where does it stop and who is it that gets to decide that a site is getting banned for “wrong think”.
Personally, I believe this isn’t so much a petition against X, but a petition against Musk, who I think wouldn’t be absolutely gutted even if X went out of business. I think he bought it with the aim of derailing anyway.
I’m not going to get in to a hissy fit because someone uses Microsoft Windows or bought something from Amazon
You’re more mature than some people here.
Why stop there, why not ban Elon all together?
Why there are always petitions to ban something, not to create something, like eu based social network everyone can join and use for free ?
Found the market liberal.
You ban stuff not because it is bad and you want something better. You ban stuff that is so bad that is actually harmful.
As with hate speech, the harm needs to be quantifiable. “I don’t like that people are sharing ideas and opinions that I personally disagree with” doesn’t cut it.
The price of freedom of speech is needing to hear things that make you uncomfortable every now and again. Deciding what people can and can’t write on the internet is a slippery slope.
The German government already has their own mastodon instance on social.bund.de
Much better alternative to a EU funded social network, as this would automatically drive critics to the assumption, that politicians are controlling the narrative and deleting critical content. Also supports the development of open source and self hosted alternatives this way.
Fascism
I think they should just force him to disclose his shitty algorithm
Edit: Third party, local moderators for social media should also be a standard requirement. No outsourcing of moderation.
Obviously not what they have in use anymore, but for a golden few seconds the algorithm was open source: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
Site doesn’t load. I trust they’re talking about banning it financially, not with a firewall, right?
There’s absolutely no sensible reason to even consider doing this.
There’s absolutely no sensible reason to even consider not doing this.
They didn’t ban it already? DOn’t they have a filter list and they tell isps to block certain sites?
No.
European politicians use X and its an assets for their governments. I doubt they are going to do much about it.
