The EU can ban X and Facebook, and Poland should push for it(translation in comments)
UE może zbanować X i Facebooka, a Polska powinna o to zabiegać
by z4konfeniksa
The EU can ban X and Facebook, and Poland should push for it(translation in comments)
UE może zbanować X i Facebooka, a Polska powinna o to zabiegać
by z4konfeniksa
32 comments
Good riddance
Banning X would be a good start to an anti-Musk counteroffensive. As Thierry Breton, former internal market commissioner at the European Commission, said in January, this is “legitimately possible.”
As we watched the spectacle put on by the U.S. administration for the Ukrainian president at the White House last week, there were some conscious voices saying that our – i.e., Europe’s – priority is not necessarily to choose the friendliest patron from the trio of the U.S., China or Russia. Instead, we should work out a way to curb Facebook and X’s arbitrariness in the European Union.
This was put more precisely by Jacek K. Sokolowski, author of last year’s book Transnaród. Poles in Search of Political Form, who wrote (on X): “The current state of Facebook and Twitter is such that all this crap would be best just blocked in Europe.”
And it’s not about “censorship,” the declaration of which Bogdan Rymanowski tried to force Magdalena Biejat to declare, nor about restoring standards or tough, protracted negotiations. Rather, it’s about immediately restricting the activities of foreign agents – a position that, as is well known, unites across divisions.
Tango with a phalanx (and chałkoń)
As a user of both services, I can add some observation to Sokolowski’s statement. X seemed to be a platform dominated by pornobots and FSB-funded accounts long before Elon Musk actively joined the campaign for the AfD, and each successive performance by J.D. Vance wiping his mouth with freedom of speech only accelerated the service’s transformation into a dysfunctional, gnarly base for anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
On Facebook, it’s a little funnier – artificial intelligence-generated, touching photos of non-existent centenarians baking bread, farmers with chalcon and elderly men waiting for dinner to be served on hold garner thousands of likes and supportive comments. The graphics, often hiding behind religious fanpages captured by political staffers or “independent” troll farms and pensioner groupies whose role in the site was strengthened a few years ago, are just a prelude to the propaganda brainwashing that awaits us in the months leading up to the presidential election.
So X caters to the young angry, Facebook to the autumn of life, grooming users with content not yet (and only seemingly) related to politics. But – and here again to quote Sokolowski – it’s not that every vote matters: “You guys are stupid and without it. The soszials are there to stupefy the political elite and decision-makers, so that they believe that what they see in the soszials are their voters and that there is no other world outside the soszials.”
For policymakers to believe that the world exists only in social media, they cannot be marginalized by it. If Musk were to cut Tusk’s reach overnight, the whole scam behind the former Twitterer would become transparent and make one look at the mechanisms of the system. That’s why, for the time being, the prime minister enjoys the relative sympathy of the American algorithm, spins popular, funny rolls on X and TikTok, and scolds his subordinates for not too readily garnering discussion on the service of a modern-day Joseph Goebbels.
“It’s unacceptable for a politician not to have his social media today,” KO politicians heard from their boss, who lives in an illusion similar to the protagonist of an old joke who stands in front of a vending machine, drops in more coins and can’t walk away from the machine, shouting to the people hurrying him along in line: “Are you guys crazy? After all, I’m still winning!” The feeling that Tusk, Myrcha and Sikorski can “cheat” the algorithm, however, is completely narcissistic and naive.
Nonetheless, it persists and drives Polish politicians, who are convening press conferences less and less frequently and are not overly concerned about media coverage – even if it is funded by the Treasury. It is unclear why we have to learn about the actions of the Polish authorities through a private American company managed by a fascist car salesman. Looking at the current state of diplomatic relations – I might as well look for reports about the Polish rule of law on Weibo.
Meta is cancer and should not be on your phone/ pc anyway
Poland should, but it’s hard to imagine considering that 50% of people vote for PiS and конфедерация.
Can EU put tariffs on US social media/software providers revenues, as part of the trade war?? netflix etc. too??
X and Facebook are a cancer for democracy. Don’t forget Brexit.
Can we not?
In times like these, which are a complete mess, we shouldnt go and create a bubble around us.
As stupid as elon is, its important that we can see the stuff thats going on around us, and Twitter is no small part of this, especially when it comes to ukraine and the flow of information.
EDIT: Downvote as much as you want, hate elon as much as you want, I dont care, but dont remove your own ability to see whats going on around you.
The state of Polish twitter is fucking toxic that that itself should be enough for a ban in the country.
Quickly, before you become as braindead as the US!
The EU should censor large parts of the planet, and you’re OK with this? Hello people you’ve drunk the fucking cool-aid. This is Anti-Freespeech of the highest order.
“We don’t like the things that you say, therefore we’ll deplatform you”.
The French taught this many years ago ->
“I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it”.
The French way is the right way. You’re absolutely wrong if you believe censorship of anything is the answer. If we have censorship, we will never know the truth – No matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel.
So fuck your feelings. Sincerely.
Yesterday was already too late. Good ridance.
This mentality of banning everyone and everything you dont like is exactly what is making people on the right more extreme.
Why would Poland push for it? If it’s EU initiative, then EU should push for it. Why are you pushing one country to be a face of this initiative?
Just do it! Its full of Russian bots and Trump propaganda anyway. Only disinformation brainwashing our citizens into thinking climate change is fake, wokeness is worse than war crimes and other completely unhinged opinions.
I’m all for it, I really am. But when considering it, we always forget about the businesses, SMEs, that use social networks to work, advertise, sell, etc. IMO this is the main issue. I’m a public worker so I’m not concerned but, yeah…
Holy shit you know something is a good policy plan when the bots are this active in opposing it.
Banning social media websites for not complying with existing EU laws on disinformation is not censorship. You will still be able to communicate online, even get your Russian botfarm slop, I promise, you’ll just have to look harder and it won’t flood half the internet constantly.
Considering they collect a lot of potentially sensitive data, it can and maybe should be implemented, just like tiktok.
Banning whole platforms like X or whatever won’t solve anything. The best way of protecting a free and open society is a solid eduction for everyone and the availability of good media for getting a factual, critical and differentiated analysis of the complex political topics we are facing nowadays. What we need is a culture of political discussion, that is not about domination over your opponent by any means possible, but that is actually aimed in expanding your understanding and finding a solution together.
Facebook and Twitter are worse than fentanyl, and there is no way back. They are used to flood spread disinformation without any control knowing that there is an effor 100:1 to validate and contrast the sources to be able to refute it…. absolute cancer
I dont use these apps myself but censorship is a slippery slope. So many willing to give away freedoms.
All “good” while you’re on the banning side, until someone decides something you enjoy should be banned to. It doesn’t stop at one and done.
“Make and use an EU app” they say, so ok we do that then that’s all good until people start to disagree and it becomes more and more authoritarian. Before you know it the EU is China.
Absolutely, Russia and the US are now both trying to manipulate the dumbest of us to elect traitors such as le pen, afd, orban and trump, and they will succeed if we dont do something to remove the amount of propaganda that are fed to our populations. Look at the guy that almost got elected in romania, look at the rise at other far right parties in several European countries.
Imagine if we had a fico or an orban in every single European country, all the increase in military envesting in wouldn’t mean shıt if let the Russian and American puppets run our governments.
I have always been a big net neutralality advocate. I still am. I also work in the tech industry. However, in this case I’d fully support the decision to ban these great tools of toilet propaganda which is effectively what Facebook et al has become.
Don’t ban them, that’ll leave a vacuum. They can continue running their networks for European users if they do it on our soil, all targeting/recommender algorithms have to be transparent (and what cannot be made transparent cannot be used), they have to be run by European companies with no US citizens in their top level leadership team, absolutely no user data may leave those entities at all, subject to inspections at any time, and so on. Make sure European competition has both legs up (and create financing for such ventures) and then let them make a bit of profit until European alternatives are superior.
So, just like communist China has its own curated social platform, the EU will now have one of its own. I’m sure the freedom of speech will be of utmost importance on this new platform.
guys, let’s ban the sites which don’t support fully the ideas I do! politicians are telling me that’s the way to go and I believe them! everyone knows we should believe our goverments! oh, and krytykapolityczna just lost funding due to Musks DOGE but I believe they say all of it because they trully believe it would make Europe and the world a better place!
The EU should ban reddit
Honestly I think just banning that stuff won’t help the fundamental problem with them, you need more stringent regulation. Russia has continuously wormed its way into the average citizen’s news and online discussions because people are addicted to their phones.
What actually needs to happen is that the EU must raise the barrier of entry for social media so that you can’t easily fall into the rabbit hole. The most efficient way of which I can think of would be to simply ban the big social media from being used on phones, that way you remove a big source of addiction.
You could still go to a laptop or a desktop computer for the same experience, but at least it won’t live rent free in your pocket all day. You’d have to go out of your way to get it. There’d also be benefits in that people would probably feel more enticed to be more social, aside from removing doomscrolling and such things.
It’d also make it way less worth it to even try shitting up the European online space, because the outreach you’d get would be stifled anyway.
Facebook and Insta are useless, but Whatsapp is a hard pill to swallow. I guess there is plenty of alternative, but the reach Whatsapp has is something different. But still supportive of a ban like that
Not ban. But regulate. It would me much more intelligent and would drive Elmo crazy. With the possibility of fines…
If you want bans on us social media,put reddit on that list also
Because free speech is the most dangerous thing to those who want to control others … You can’t have a population sharing non-approved thoughts.
Big Tech should and must play by our rules or not at all. The open secret of all these social media sites, apps and so forth is that they’ll all easily replaceable, there’s just usually no incentive to do that. In other words US big tech has next to nothing in terms of leverage, we can easily bend them to our rules or just outright replace them.
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