What follows is an unholy trinity of highly incestuous stories that I've covered on an individual basis elsewhere and that I'll try to briefly synthesize here:
· 1) Medieval EU Censorship Regime Goes Into Full Effect
· 2) Elon Musk Folds Like a Lawn Chair to EU Censorship Regime
· 3) YouTube Adopts WHO 'Medical Misinformation' Censorship Regime
Related: U.S. Government Now Using AI to Suss Out 'Sentiment and Emotion' in Social Media Posts
On the first score, Via Reuters:
"More than a dozen of the world’s biggest tech companies face unprecedented legal scrutiny, as the European Union’s sweeping Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes new rules on content moderation, user privacy and transparency.
From Friday, a host of internet giants – including Meta’s (META.O) Facebook and Instagram platforms, Apple’s online App Store, and a handful of Google (GOOGL.O) services – will face new obligations in the EU, including preventing harmful content from spreading, banning or limiting certain user-targeting practices, and sharing some internal data with regulators and associated researchers…
The EU is seen as the global leader in tech regulation, with more wide-ranging pieces of legislation – such as the Digital Markets Act and the AI Act – on the way. The bloc’s success in implementing such laws will influence the introduction of similar rules around the world."
"Content moderation" = censorship
"Tech regulation" = censorship
"Preventing harmful content from spreading" = censorship.
These euphemisms are out of control. At least the totalitarians of the 20th century had the honesty to tout their totalitarianism for what it was, rather than hiding behind technocratic, pseudo-humanitarian jargon.
Via Cyber Risk GmbH:
"The Digital Services Act is the most important and most ambitious regulation in the world in the field of the protection of the digital space against the spread of illegal content, and the protection of users’ fundamental rights. There is no other legislative act in the world having this level of ambition to regulate social media, online marketplaces, very large online platforms (VLOPs) and very large online search engines (VLOSEs). The rules are designed asymmetrically: Larger intermediary services with significant societal impact (VLOPs and VLOSEs) are subject to stricter rules.
After the Digital Services Act, platforms will not only have to be more transparent, but will also be held accountable for their role in disseminating illegal and harmful content…
More diligent content moderation, less disinformation:
– Platforms and search engines need to take measures to address risks linked to the dissemination of illegal content online and to negative effects on freedom of expression and information;
– Platforms need to have clear terms and conditions and enforce them diligently and non-arbitrarily;
– Platforms need to have a mechanism for users to flag illegal content and act upon notifications expeditiously;
– Platforms need to analyse their specific risks, and put in place mitigation measures – for instance, to address the spread of disinformation and inauthentic use of their service."
On the second score, via Associated Press:
"European Commissioner Thierry Breton said late Thursday that he noted the'“strong commitment of Twitter to comply' with the Digital Services Act, sweeping new standards that the world’s biggest online platforms all must obey…
Breton, who oversees digital policy, is also meeting other tech bosses in California. He’s the EU’s point person working to get Big Tech ready for the new rules, which will force companies to crack down on hate speech, disinformation and other harmful and illegal material on their sites. The law takes effect Aug. 25 for the biggest platforms."
So much for Musk's professed commitment to "free speech."
On the third score, via Reclaim the Net:
"YouTube, the titan of online video content, has expanded its Covid misinformation policy to cover what it calls all forms of medical misinformation.
YouTube has also declared its plan to delist videos promoting “cancer treatments proven to be harmful or ineffective,” effectively disallowing content creators from encouraging natural cures.
The platform pledges to implement its medical misinformation policies when a topic exhibits high public health risks, is supposedly prone to misinformation, and when official guidance from health authorities is accessible to the public."
Via YouTube:
"As medical information – and misinformation – continuously evolves, YouTube needs a policy framework that holds up in the long term, and preserves the important balance of removing egregiously harmful content while ensuring space for debate and discussion.
Moving forward, YouTube will streamline dozens of our existing medical misinformation guidelines to fall under three categories – Prevention, Treatment, and Denial. These policies will apply to specific health conditions, treatments, and substances where content contradicts local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO)…
We will remove content that contradicts health authority guidance on treatments for specific health conditions, including promoting specific harmful substances or practices."
By "harmful substances," YouTube presumably means it will censor content regarding actual safe and effective medications such as ivermectin, once universally demonized in corporate state media and now recognized by the US FDA (probably under threat of legal consequences) as a treatment for COVID-19.
Related: COVID Propaganda Roundup: The Ivermectin War
Nation-states under EU jurisdiction can no longer be rationally said to be "free," to the extent that they ever truly were to begin with. They are now part of a wholly integrated slave colony of the multinational technocracy, headed by the World Economic Forum and similar organizations outside of the reach of any democratic control.
Related: The Unabomber Predicted the Rise of WEF-Style Technocracy in the Mid-90s
The national governments within the EU are, in the words of Klaus Schwab, "penetrated," with strong overtones of rape. That is what this is – the rape of formerly sovereign nations at economic and political gunpoint.
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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