New U.S. President Joe Biden and the European Union are on the “same page” as regards to regulating Big Tech. That’s according to the Head of the EU Commission.
President Biden “An Ally” on Big Tech
Ursula Von Der Leyen told CNBC on Wednesday:
If there’s hate out there, if there’s polarization, fake news, all of these are things that are threats to our democracies and I am sure that we will have an ally to work on that.
She added that while “Europe is coming forward with these standards.. I am convinced that the United States will be attentively listening because Joe Biden has always been a politician who was cherishing the rules-based order.” Ms. Von Der Leyen, who leads the EU’s executive arm, backed “clear guidelines that the internet companies take responsibility for the content they distribute.”
She has also told Brussels lawmakers that while it “may have been” right for Twitter to remove Donald Trump’s access to the service during his final days in the White House, “such serious interventions in freedom of expression should be made on the basis of laws and not according to the rules of the game of companies, based on the decision of politicians and parliaments and not the managers of Silicon Valley.”
Companies should not be responsible for what people publish. That is what this whole section 230 argument was about, on both sides. I say, leave it the way it is and let the market sort it out. That is why Gab and Minds (and Parler) were started. Then you get real competition on the social media front, instead of just two large players (Facebook and Twitter). Gab is where Facebook was back in 2007, so this is all just getting started.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I think
[email protected]‘s post is right on target.
Then companies should nit be editorializing what people post, otherwise they should be not get protection.
I completely agree John. I love that idea since it protects the startup companies and curtails Twitter & Facebook from what they have been engaging in.
I just don’t think it will happen under Biden. What I see his people doing is taking protections away, leaving only the large players who can filter every post and killing all alternative social media companies. Gab, for example, is cut off from every company, so they cannot even get access to any type of basic AI filters and much more that would be needed if protections were taken away.
That is why I would sooner have them just leave it alone, instead of making matters worse. Twitter and Facebook can slowly die off or just shrink and everyone else can move on.
Here’s the proper translation: As long as the radical left can use Apple, Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor free speech selectively, i.e., silence conservatives and Christians, AND get a cut of the profits, they will be left alone. Otherwise, each one of them will be divided up in order to make them easier to control.
So what will a broken up, punitively regulated Apple look like? Will they still be able to sell their own products in their own stores or will they be forced to showcase the competition in the name of fairness. Will Apple have to give shelf space to Samsung phones? Just asking.