It wasn’t like a law banning X. They were Court ordered to do something and they didn’t do it.
Could that happen in other countries? I mean sure but not the way you’re implying.
The UK government has already accused them of stirring up riots.
We ban piracy sites on the largest ISPs, and could easily add X to that list.
Yes, please!!
I’m genuinely surprised why the UK haven’t already
Under what law?
UK currently holds the people that post things liable for their own words. X, the platform, just relays what is said. Same as Lemmy. Same as Mastodon.
If you ban X I don’t see why those other platforms wouldn’t be next.
Now should people/organisations/companies leave X? Absolutely! Evacuate like it’s a house of fire. Should it be shut down by legal means? No.
An argument being made in another social media case (involving TikTok) is that algorithmic feeds of other users’ content are effectively new content, created by the platform. So if Twitter does anything other than a chronological sorting, it could be considered to be making its own, deliberately-produced content, since they’re now in control of what you see and when you see it. Depending on how the TikTok argument gets interpreted in the courts, it could possibly affect how Twitter can operate in the future.
It’s certainly arguable that the algorithm constitutes an editorial process and so that opens them up to libel laws and to liability.
Fair point.
That argument is being made in the USA, not the UK.
Let’s say this goes through, how is a company going to prove it is not using an “algorithmic feed” unless they open source their code and/or provide some public interface to test and validate feed content?
Plus, even without an “algorithmic feed”, couldn’t some third party using bots control a simple chronological or upvote/like-based feed? And then those third parties, via contracts and agreements, would manipulate the content rather than the social media owner itself.
unless they open source their code and/or provide some public interface to test and validate feed content
This honestly seems like a good idea. I think one of the ways to mitigate the harm of algorithmically driven content feeds is openness and transparency.
Well for the end users and any regulators it’s a great idea. But the companies aren’t going to go along with this.
Then they must be held liable for what they allow to spread on their platforms
Twitter (or rather musk) chooses what it “relays” or boosts. Unlike lemmy, unlike Mastodon.
The Australian Government issued a bunch of take down notices to Twitter and Musk said no
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-23/what-can-the-government-do-about-x/103752600
Musk decided to block them in Australian only which didn’t satisfy the Australian Government
He took them to court and the court sided with Twitter, (x)
https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/australian-court-elon-musk-x-freedom-of-speech-row-1236000561/
The complexity and contradictions were illustrated by Tim Begbie, the lawyer representing the eSafety Commissioner in court. He said that in other cases X had chosen of its own accord to remove content, but that it resisted the order from the Australian government.
“X says […] global removal is reasonable when X does it because X wants to do it, but it becomes unreasonable when it is told to do it by the laws of Australia,” Begbie told the court.
Here’s the thing about nation state governments. They can pass laws. It’s kind of the main thing they do.
They retain authority by having some air of legitimacy. They can’t just change laws, there has to be a due process just changing laws without a process is literally a dictatorship.
I agree. It would set a terrible precedent, even if it’s terribly tempting. I’d say it’s better to ask people to leave instead.
I’m sure they would like to but they don’t really have the authority.
I’m all for adopting Wayland but some compatibility should be preserved. An outright ban seems a bit extreme.
😂👌🏻
unfortunately i still have to side against national firewalls even when i think they’re extremely funny
I initially agreed with you but this is a bit different. Actually haven’t banned anything it’s just a court order so it wasn’t done because some politician decided it should happen it was done because of things that Twitter chose to do, or not do as the case may be.
Presumably this won’t be permanent provided the capitulate.
I think they don’t have a literal national firewall, rather they demanded every single ISP in the country to block the domain.
Anyone who tries to use software to access the platform now faces fines of up to A$13,000 per day.
Criminalizing access sounds worse than a national firewall but sure.
i’m pretty sure that’s how most national firewalls work. it’s still government censorship of internet resources on a national level
Yes, they should.
Twitter already bans and takes down posts for most other nations, Musk even posted about how they have to to operate.
This is quite literally no different. If you want to operate in a country, love or hate it, you have to agree to their laws for their users. If the EU laws say posting revenge porn, you can’t ignore them and say nuh uh we’re a US company free speech. If Japan has a law saying posting bomb instructions is an instaban, you have follow suit. And in Brazil, 7 accounts, seven were identified by a court as needing to be taken down for spreading misinformation. You can object, but then stop doing it for the other countries as well, because Twitter absolutely must cooperate with the US and EU on these requests or they get massive fines as well. And they do.
Its a stupid act of grandstanding and Elon thought they would blink first, or the fallout wouldn’t be so obvious and massive.
I hope so.
Musk complied with India, why isn’t he complying with Brazil?
Because our current government is center left and the accounts were supporters of the right. That’s all there is to it, he even reinstated Monark’s account, a podcaster from here that fled to the USA after arguing that Nazis should be free to have their own political party, and after arriving there said that we shouldn’t criminalize the consumption of CSAM, just production.
X has been banned in several authoritarian countries. Brazil has banned several social media sites to force them to comply with revealing info of selected users and banning accounts of government selected accounts.
I think any country would ban a business whose CEO ignores requests by its judges and even proceeds to taunt them. An international business that decides which laws it does or does not follow is pretty dystopian, all X had to do was what Google has done for ages, comply with the law regionally.
X gave up the info on hundreds of accounts and blocked hundreds more. Google will do anything to make money, spread any lie, just look what they did when they tried to expand into China.
If X did that, then there wouldn’t be this thread. It isn’t just Google, it’s every international corporation that has to deal with issues across the border. I’m sorry, bud, but outside of the Musk personality cult chamber, the guy is just incompetent, he just made and inherited a few risky bets that worked out for him and he’s still riding their fading glory.
Yes
Let’s hope so. Destroy all a-social media platforms!
I know it’s not full-on ban we’re seeing here but I’m always against banning things. It just sends the wrong message and it’s harmful for everyone.
Plenty of good reasons to ban things, even if they’re useful. Asbestos. In fact, banning asbestos didn’t harm anyone, as your comment would imply. It actually helped people.
I don’t think I have to clarify that I meant banning social media and such.
So by virtue of social media existing, it can’t be flawed? It can’t be broken? It can’t be harmful? It can’t be pushing racist and fascist ideology?
There’s a mountain of evidence showing the harms social media does, and you’re just acting like all that research doesn’t exist.
First of all, if you want to have a genuine argument, don’t go out and throw sarcastic nonsense right out of the bat. You’d be pretty pissed if I said that you don’t care about freedom of speech and that you suggest a total authoritarian society. I know that that’s not the case and so should you.
And second, who decides what’s harmful enough to ban? Should we ban anything that is harmful? Or should we only ban things the government deems harmful? Pretty sure many countries still consider LGBTQ communities harmful so if that’s the case, they should be banned.
You don’t get to decide who’s being harmful and who’s not (Should I also make clear that I’m not advocating pedos sharing CSAM or such criminals?). If you are the admin and you want your community to be certain way, please, by all means. Governmental ban? Hard no.
Also, if you ban them, they don’t disappear just like that. If anything, the worst of them migrate and find somewhere else and make it even worse than it was. It’s about addressing the root causes. Educate people, don’t just push the problem out of sight. That’s where we’re failing. Let people realize that racists and nazis are below 60 IQ bigots and let people make fun of them. That’s how freedom of speech should work.
Sure, X is a pool of sewage. But banning it? Why? Let them do what they want.
I hope not. Ban = authoritarianism
They were banned for refusing to follow Brazilian laws, specially laws about disinformation. Twitter was banned in Brazil because its actively working as a propaganda outlet.
Propaganda = authoritarianism
I think they were banned because they didn’t have a representative in the country that they could serve those allegations to.
No, that’s an oversimplification. The judge has been asking the representatives in Brazil to block some accounts that have been spreading disinformation. The representatives replied to the judge saying they’re just representatives and X/Twitter wouldn’t comply with that request. In Brazil, if you’re the representative of a company, you have to have the power to comply with Brazil’s laws. As they were not complying, the judge gave them extra time to comply and mentioned if they didn’t comply, the local president/director/representative would go to jail. That’s when X/Twitter closed the representation in Brazil.
After that, the only action left available for the judge was to block X/Twitter.
The judge also blocked all bank accounts for Starlink, a different company.
While I think the ban is justified, the power the judge has is definitely fishy too.
Elon is full of shit but banning “propaganda” sites sets a dangerous precedent. Who decides what qualifies? It’s a slippery slope to censorship. It just sends a wrong message to whoever in charge.
Better approach: Promote critical thinking and media literacy. Empower people to evaluate information themselves.
Free speech isn’t always comfortable, but it’s a foundation for a healthy democracy.
authoritarianism is when no twitter
