EU stops advertising on X over hate speech. Fines could follow next year
EU stops advertising on X over hate speech. Fines could follow next year
The European Union is pulling its advertisements from Elon Musk’s X for now, citing an “alarming increase” in hate speech and disinformation on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
EU stops advertising on X over hate speech. Fines could follow next year::The European Union is pulling its advertisements from Elon Musk’s X for now, citing an “alarming increase” in hate speech and disinformation on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
This comment will make me sound like an idiot, but I’m just coming to believe that all of Musk’s decisions with X were targeted to this very outcome. To be the world’s centre of alt right propaganda. It just makes too much sense now.
He's not that smart. He got stuck having to buy Twitter after his pump and dump backfired. His solution to having to buy Twitter was to cut costs by firing staff and use his celebrity to manufacturer engagement with troll posts.
The problem he missed was that staff was necessary to keep hate speech under control and his trolling meant to drive engagement would backfire from advertisers and regulators.
I wouldn't say idiot, just very naive when it comes to your assessment of Musk's ability to think ahead. He's basically a South African Alex Jones who started out rich(er) 🤷
He didn't come up with the plan, he was given the plan.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/was-elon-musks-strategy-twitter-rcna118490
There has been an increase in blatant racism and prejudice. I don't know if those users eventually get banned. If the right takes any action against blatant hate speech, shitheads like Tim Pool will start crying and denounce the platform as not allowing free speech. If they allow "free speech," then the shitheads eventually drive all the normal people off the platform. The only good thing is that Twitter already has a left wing population, so as long as they can maintain that, it should avoid turning to shit. It was also a mainstream platform so hopefully that should maintain the normie population.
Sites like Lemmy instances are better at allowing a wider range of "free speech" because as long as the instance population is large enough to keep the shitheads a minority, they can stick to their own subs and generally keep the bullshit quarantined.
I think it's not impossible that the goal was simply to discredit Twitter entirely
You'd be right. 10 days before he bought it, Musk got linked a plan to buy twitter and turn it into right-wing American WeChat.
I heard about it on Rachel Maddow's October 2 show (has it really been 2 months since then?)
Not sure why you’d assume you sound like an idiot. You’re just coming to a hypothesis based on all available information. It seems like a sane train of reasoning based on all the empirical evidence we’ve seen thus far.
It’s likely that he didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did, or that he hoped there’s a bigger appetite or marketplace for X in this capacity. It’s also possible he didn’t think it all through as was made more likely by the way he was trying to come up with reasons to get out of the deal.
He's just a stupid narcissist that came into money. They don't think that far ahead, and it makes him look bad so he wouldn't want this outcome
Misinformation has already spread in the continent. This will be downvoted but "too little, too late" is the only thing that comes to my mind reading that piece of news.
Better late than never, I say
Something to be said for doing the optimal thing with impeccable timing, I'd posit.
I feel like the EU is one of the few forces of good in the world these days.
It is not. But it has been doing some right things when it comes to privacy protection and so on.
Still, Trump's border wall and caged children are merely cute compared to the shit going on at the borders of the EU.
I disagree. The EU is one of the best things that ever happened to us Europeans, who knows, we might be fighting another war if history went different.
Politically, the EU spins around between based decisions and crap like chat surveillance, but over all, it has been a major contributor to the high standard of life in Europe, I'm convinced of this.
Still, Trump’s border wall and caged children are merely cute compared to the shit going on at the borders of the EU.
What kind of things should I think of?
Not for long we all get very right to fascist governments the next year's and things will go south. Germany with a CDU/AFD coalition, Le pen in France, if those two happen I see a dark future ahead, but hey climate change will bite us in the ass anyway. Why not go under under fascist leadership...
We're not very good at learning from the past, are we?
Until you find out it lets Muslim immigrants (80% of whom prefer sharia law over eu law) take over entire towns & countries.
They're not consciously letting Muslims take over towns just to willingly destroy their own country. It just so happens that decades of poor foreign policy by the West have destabilised the Middle East (that's not to say Middle Eastern countries also don't have their own agency to improve their own situation) creating massive inflows of refugees. And the EU, which happens to be next door, had to take in refugees from Muslim-majority country. Or else what? Let them die or shelterless?
I can hear some already asking why won't neighbouring Muslim countries take in their fellow Muslim refugees? They have the same culture and would cause few tension, right? These countries already did. Turkey alone took three million Syrian refugees. They have the majority of Muslim refugees, not Europe. But the Western media with their parochial, in-group bias over-report and overemphasise tensions with Muslims migrants. Turkey has the same problem to the point that immigration has become a sticking point in the last Turkish presidential election. The left-leaning rival candidate reluctantly had to resort to anti-immigration rhetoric in the last days before the election to boost ratings. You won't hear that in mainstream news in the West, won't you?
Really, these news of EU wrecking itself by "allowing migrants thanks to open borders" is literally fake news. People sympathise with that racist and far-right rhetoric without viewing the full picture. But I guess people are still tribal with our un-evolved lizard-brain to think in heuristics and stereotypes. We just easily buy in to the angry rhetoric.
Also, I definitely agree that mass migration is causing tension, I'm not denying that. However, climate change is worsening domestic situations in developing countries on top of poor foreign policies. The Arab Spring, Syrian civil war, and conflicts in Africa is exacerbated by climate change as drought worsens, which leads to more hungry mouths which then leads to social and political tensions as they blame their governments. Refugees then leave and risks travelling through deserts, mountains and sea to more stable places like Europe. What is the EU going to do? Let them drown? And then they get blamed for massacring civilians? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Edit: spelling
What exactly does the EU advertise?
I would imagine tourism and such
I dunno. Like, cheese? EU cheese?
Maybe baklava?
It's a big place. I think. I dunno.
Finally they quit giving my tax money to a billionaire Nazi to promote laws against my citizen rights.
I had the exact same question.
Their militaries spend a ton on ads
I imagine this will make musk's "thermonuclear lawsuit" lose a few teeth
Thermonuclear lawsuit? Even the name sounds ridiculous
I love this, go get that refund! Should have happened a lot earlier though
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In October, a few days after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel, the European Commission asked X to provide details of the actions it was taking to combat the spread of “illegal content and disinformation” on its platform.
A tidal wave of antisemitism, Islamophobia and misinformation has engulfed social media platforms in recent weeks since the unprecedented October 7 attack by Hamas, followed by air strikes and a ground offensive by Israel against the Hamas-controlled enclave of Gaza.
“It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to CNN.
Germany’s Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency, which promotes equal treatment at work and in everyday life, announced on October 11 that it would stop using X entirely, citing an “enormous increase” in discriminatory and hateful speech on the platform.
“Ministries and state bodies should ask themselves whether it is still acceptable to remain on a platform that has become a disinformation network and whose owner spreads antisemitic, racist and populist content,” Ferda Ataman, Germany’s independent federal commissioner for anti-discrimination, said in a statement.
Sandra Wachter, a professor of technology and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, said they are required by the DSA to treat their boss like any other user by, for example, taking down his posts or flagging them as problematic if they break EU rules.
The original article contains 940 words, the summary contains 255 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Why next year?
a fine is unlikely until next year as each of the EU’s 27 member states first needs to appoint national “digital services coordinators” — with the power to impose penalties — by February 17. So far, only two states, Italy and Hungary, have done so, a commission spokesperson told CNN.
I mean all social media has hate speech of one kind of another and it's almost all misinformation or part truths. Really depends on the agenda.
I get, and approve of, ending your sponsorship via ads. But I don't think legal recourse should be rewarded.
Any business transaction has risk. If you decide to advertise on Superbowl, you're putting your chips on NFL.
If you're advertising on Twitter, after the Musk purchase, your money is on Musk and Twitters staff to continue the value. If Musk says stupid shit that devalues your investment... well, that's on you for putting your money on it, and not exercising your exit clause a year ago.
Purged by creator
I think the person you replied to assumed that the legal action was related to the pulling of ads, when they're actually two independent incidents.
It's two separate things, from the article:
A more drastic move could come next year. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, could impose a fine of more than $100 million on X if the company is found to have breached tough new EU rules aimed at cleaning up digital media.