What do you think about the idea of banning Twitter in the EU?

Twitter actively pushes some content and hides others.
So it's controlling what people see with an editorial decision.
The fact that this decision is made by an algorithm is entirely irrelevant.
Therefore Twitter should be fully responsible for any harm caused by what it publishes, and any illegal content.
They can't claim to be just a platform as long as their algorithm controls what people get to see.

If the EU enforced this, there would be no need to ban Twitter.

Twitter isnt a social media plattform anymore. Its like truth social a plattform for propaganda. And as we do boycott, bann and so on russian and chinese propaganda, we should ban us propaganda too. I think ith that easy. (:

The main issue with Twitter is that we will never be able to prove that the algorithms are not manipulating users by shaping a certain narrative. Combine this with the unsettling events of recent months and I feel like we have no other choice than banning this platform in the free world.

Yes, Let's censor the news we disagree with!
- This is not about disagreement but the total lack of transparency and control over potentially hostile and destructive narratives. Right now, what Elon pushes on twitter is borderline hate speech, corruption and fake news. And hate speech is illegal in many countries. It‘s exactly the same situation as with TikTok and USA, who are still likely to ban TikTok. Also, I don’t think Twitter should be banned on the internet level like what China is doing. But as a European I should be able to disable all algorithms and other content manipulation methods when using the service.

I worry that these actions of banning platforms with ultimately break global awareness. We still have things like bluesky but Twitter was the platform for awhile. As the US slowly alienates and isolates itself from the rest if the world well find ourself ultimately less informed. Granted, Twitter is now a cesspool but generally I don't like seeing our information channels close.

I'm an American so maybe the rest of you won't agree with me, but I think the idea is great. We should also ban it here in the US, in Australia, and Mexico, and Canada and, really, the whole world.

Not a fan of banning sites. This establishes infrastructure, which a future fascist regime could use for their purposes. Better to strengthen local alternatives and let it happen by itself.

Exactly, govt representatives, journalists and newspapers should at the very least start using alternatives like Mastodon and Bluesky. Let Twitter wither away by itself after that.
what about restricting use by governments?

people should make choices, governments should be sovereign in as many ways as possible imo… twitter has proven that it’s not an unbiased utility

or perhaps the “primary source of truth” must be elsewhere and may be shared to twitter, but governments must do whatever they can to ensure that citizens primary method of interaction is through sovereign sources - which may mean limited posting to twitter/meta etc, or it may mean marketing

I don't like the idea of banning social media, newspapers, books, or news websites. Even if they go downhill like twitter. Just opting out and ignoring them, will do. If many do it, it will collapse by itself. But there must be a good alternative and that is difficult.

@nuko147 @SchwertImStein Me neither, but politicians should not be using commercial and closed platforms for communication owned by people like Zuck and Musk that earn money with this... That is something I DO take issue with. And i don't really see how Bluesky is better than X.

This was the moment where banning twitter turned from a good idea into a non negotiable measure we need to take asap.

If the ban brings a new alternative in place, then yes. I'm not from the EU or the USA, but I'm used to Mastodon and Lemmy. I don't mind non-american alternatives. The EU should have its own competitive social media for the rest of the world.

this has been done in a few countries but running a government mastodon instance and giving departments and official accounts profiles… i kinda love that, but wish mastodon supported domains like bsky does

id love to have like [email protected], [email protected], etc but afaik the way mastodon works is you need to devote an entire domain to it, so they’d have to be like [email protected], which is kinda verbose :(
- True. That's unfortunate, i feel that.
Bluesky?
- Unfortunately, as I understand it, Bluesky has an identical algorithm with Twitter. Ive lost patience with how American-led technology has taken the world's attention for granted. What I had when I was on Bluesky was reading the same information being viraled and repeated, and the same prominent users from Twitter absorbing almost all of my attention. Bluesky promoting the same users since 2010 made the world smaller for me and I'd rather be on Mastodon where smaller creators are somewhat boosted. Moreover, spaces on Lemmy are teaching me a lot about the European Union, and since I'm an outsider and I don't live in the west, I deeply enjoy being educated rather than sensationalized with the same conspiracy theory. I firmly believe there's a larger world than what an American-led algorithm often portrays. But, I acknowledge that everyone is different and I understand that they might still have preferences that are different to mine. Nonetheless, I still want an algorithm that actually shows me niche topics all around the world.

We should ban it for politicians. Why on earth would you use a for-profit foreign platform for official communication?

I wrote to my MP asking them to stop using it and to help to get other MPs off the platform. Everyone should write to their representativea in government asking them to do the same.

I think companies etc should be banned from sharing news and updates there. Eg. A lot of public transport news is shared there, sometimes exclusively. It would be ideal if people could get access but nothing official or important was facilitated. Imagine if we were having to access truth social to find out if public transport was cancelled due to a snowstorm - well, now xitter is truth social.

I’d be in favour of this. I think we’ve seen how fickle the masses are. They need to be shielded from the fake, toxic shit that is social media

Do it!

Not a fully formed opinion yet; but since X is ran in a way that encourages populism, misinformation and extremism, yeah. Maybe it could make it harder for extremists to connect and recruit new people. But if that is the goal, banning X is not enough. Platforms like Telegram are also popular for harboring extremists. So it would probably need a widespread effort across public platforms to be regulated and better moderated.

the difference is that telegram is a chat application rather than a public space. i've been on telegram for 10 years at this point and i've never gotten so much as an invite from people i don't know. the owner is iffy so my friend group is trying to migrate away but none of us have ever seen the things telegram is famous for. i'm not even sure i know how to get shit like that to show up. on twitter it's in your face as soon on you log in.
- You make a good point. I also used Telegram some years ago and never gotten invites to questionable channels, although I think you can search for channels in the app. But another way to learn about them is through influencers advertising them on social media like Twitter, facebook, insta etc. which brings us full circle xD
  
  on twitter it's in your face
  
  I wrote a lengthy paragraph and realized that I don't know how bad it is, and how to act accordingly. I agree with another person saying, that they are against bans on media. Maybe the EU could offer a compromise: Abide by some fancy schmancy laws that address content moderation or get lost. But then again, I do not trust politicians in the EU parliament to a) understand the technology and it's limitations b) be interested in this, since there are many conservatives who could actually benefit from twitter being in the state it's in.

Depends what "ban" means. If it refers to them not being able to be commercially active in the EU because they violate EU regulations, sure. So no selling ads, no targeting ads, no selling blue check-marks.

If it refers to preventing people from the EU to access their website through meddling with DNS or similar means, then i am against it. We should be able to access it, but they shouldnt be able to make money off it in the EU.

I do agree.

Some people might need access to those sites for various reasons (journalists making research, keeping in contact with friends overseas, etc.). But we ought to inform the european population about the dangers of using those services, and preferably move politics and country-specific communication (your local police station social media account) onto european solutions.

Cutting off or limiting the profits which american megacorps can make off the european population does also sound like a good idea.

X does not and will not comply with EU rules, and thus needs to be banned until they change (i.e. indefinitely).

I am also fine with escalating fines until the problems are addressed. Say, start with 1000$ and double that every week until they comply, either they do or there'll be a lot of money.

Can I answer: "Yes" loudly enough?

I'd prefer tariffs on Twitter and Tesla in all EU nations until the Trump tariffs are removed --> income should be used to fund European social media and European car production

Yes. Freedom of speech? There is no true freedom of speech there so limiting X is not a violation of it

I would rather the users all realize it's a nazi bar and stop using it, but that's never going to happen. Too many people are oblivious, don't care, or are pro-nazi. Shutting down the nazi bar with the power of the state is acceptable to me.

Not a twitter/x or bluesky user, never really my type of preferred social media. So I wouldn't miss it.

However we must realize the most crucial factor about X in Europe, the fact that it's a clearly compromised and biased network, highly subject to corruption, division and disinformation.

Would the average person participate and support X if it was owned by a russian oligarch? And that russian propaganda was quite obvious within the social platform?

Some would, sure, but the majority would mistrust it and be far more critical about potentially false information.

So yeah, it should be categorically banned from EU nations. Not because I hate it, but because of the dangers of division it represents to our society. Specially when for those who like X-style platforms there's already "non-regime" alternatives.

it kinda is owned by a russian oligarch

A tiktok ban style law would go against freedom of speech. Better to let the EC and the courts ban Twitter based on the existing, sensible DSA law.

Banning a platform doesn't take the right to speak freely
- Yes, that's what the DSA says.
  
  But it's not ok to ban a website just because there was a petition for it, there needs to be a better reason than that.
will they do it though?

Fuck Twitter but not sure a ban would be a good thing

Banning fascists instead of accomodating them is absolutely the right thing to do. It's accommodating them that got us into this mess.
- @starlinguk @turtl If we do what the bad people do, are we the bad people? (censorship)
  
  @buyfromeu

Banning shitter - sounds okay to me

There are still some ways to use banned apps and programmes. Besides it takes away opportunity of making your own decisions and creates the atmosphere of censorship.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind. I also wouldn't mind banning any and all of social media.
The experiment was fun while it lasted but as is often the case some people poison the well. And that happened to every social media. In my eyes every social media is very much a propaganda tool and destabilizes the democracies around the world. The corporations behind these are not moderating enough because they don't want to or it is to costly for them or just - what I can understand - too much to do feasibly.
So every social media should be banned. I understand that this is not what everyone thinks or wants to hear, but in my eyes the car already hit the wall and we have to live with the consequences.
(I do fully understand that this means reddit, feddit, youtube and others. I would really miss feddit and youtube but well... I like to live in a progressive society and not in a dystopian, propaganda riddled shadow of its former self.)

It sounds like your advocating banning open communication
- I understand your concerns and effectivly if put it that way I'm advocating just that. I concur that this will put me in a bad spot.
  
  Open communication is a very powerful tool especially in politics and academia. The thing is propaganda is also a powerful tool in politics. Propaganda and populism. With social media both of them became ubiquitous much to the detriment of the western democracies. The corona pandemic and all things about vaccination are a prime example of this trend.
  While I still would very much like to have the ability to chat with someone from Australia or see pictures of people in Bali or share recipies with people of Norway, I see the downsides and am very worried of the trend that is emerging. The political discourse is rife with populism and the divided masses go into the fox holes for every matter be it as small as an atom and without any merit to argue about.
  I have the feeling that compassion, understanding, and sympathy is going downhill and social media is giving a minority a voice to sound like a majority. I have the feeling that social media is exasperating all the negative emotions of the people. And to be honest that scares me.
  
  So unless social media is heavily moderated - to battle e.g. hate speech and propaganda - I think a shutdown of every social media is needed.
  
  But I have a question for you: Do you think of phpbb forums and blogs as open communication? If that's the case, I'd say that I'm ambivalent of this issue since I wouldn't mind blogs and forums since they are (typically) moderated.
  
  P.S.: Reading all this again I see that it could be positive to give a minority a voice - like people with rare diseases so they could get better help, like repressed people and so on and so forth. But I still believe that sadly the cons outweigh the pros.

In my opinion, the advantages of these platforms will far outweigh the disadvantages - provided that the abuse of power can be curbed (opaque algorithms that present fringe positions to a large audience, censorship by the owner, etc.). Regulatory measures are needed for all actors: rules for algorithm transparency, audits. If disclosure or audit fails, platforms can continue to be accessible but must shut down algorithms.

These platforms are literally the reason why the US has a fascist as president.

I'm not a believer in any form of censorship. That's not how you fight against shit ideas or products.

Also, what would be next? Ban people not voting for the right candidate and then, those wearing socks the wrong color? According to who? That's a dangerously slippery slope...

I’m sorry if this is not a good community for this question. If not please point me to one.

'Buy from EU' as I see it is not 'force people to buy from EU' it's more about 'encourage people by showing them EU alternatives as honestly as possible' (they're not perfect, nor are they always as feature-rich as the US alternatives) ;)

The slippery slope argument is such bullshit. The reason the Nazis got to power is because of the slippery slope argument. The reason Mussolini got into power is because of the slippery slope argument. Fascism should not be acceptable. End of story.

Learn history.
- Hey, the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s/1930s has complex origins and historians have written many books about it. There are many reasons for Hitlers and Mussolinis rise to power, so let's not go around and give undercomplex explanations like "the slippery slope argument"
- Learn history.
  
  Repeating crap you've heard here or there has little to do with learning history, or learning anything for that matter but I've little hope this will change any time soon.
  
  Thanks nonetheless for that wise suggestion, we should all agree upon studying history (a lot more interesting than simply learning it, mind you).
  
  The slippery slope argument is such bullshit. The reason the Nazis got to power is because of the slippery slope argument. The reason Mussolini got into power is because of the slippery slope argument. Fascism should not be acceptable. End of story.
  
  Also, thx for such an articulated comment that excellently demonstrates as much practice as desire to discuss our diverging view points. Unless, could it be I only have a (apparently terribly wrong) personal opinion on a question upon which you speak the truth? In which case, what was that you were saying? Oh, yeah: 'end of story'.
  
  Edit: small corrections
hear hear