While the United States is blasting Big Tech for censoring conservative speech, the European Union is mulling a similar crackdown on “offensive content.”
Europe has been putting pressure on tech companies for a variety of reasons in recent years, ranging from stricter privacy laws to the “Right to Be Forgotten” and the “Paris Call” for government regulation of hate speech.
The EU Court of Justice’s upcoming ruling however, presumably within the year, will define how intensely Facebook will be expected to police its content going forward. That’s not just within the EU, but everywhere else.
According to Bloomberg, the powderkeg that blew open this latest call took place in Austria, where former Green member of the European Parliament, Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, was the subject of offensive Facebook posts. In response, she demanded the platform block any further posts featuring images of her if they have offensive captions.
Facebook is wary of the impending court case, citing in an email that this hypothetical regulation “undermines the long-standing principle that one country should not have the right to limit free expression in other countries.”
The company added later on in the email that it hopes the court will respect the sovereignty of nations and platforms to self govern, “even in the age of the internet, the scope of court orders from one country must be limited to its borders.”
Controversial political commentator and Infowars contributor Paul Joseph Watson, who was booted from Facebook, called the move ironic, tweeting: “Facebook warns that the EU's demand it remove 'offensive content' is a ‘threat to freedom of speech’. Give me strength.”
As it is, Facebook is already under heavy scrutiny in the U.S. for precisely the opposite reason. Facebook has been accused of being trigger-happy with censorship, and even worse, accused of censoring based upon political ideology. The platform was accused of censoring articles in February which expressed skepticism over the Jussie Smollett hate hoax incident.
The platform flagged a Texas GOP pro-life post in March, claiming after it was called out that it mistook the post as “clickbait.” The company has gone on record saying that it’s priority “is always to keep people on Facebook safe.”
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Both sides of American politics, divided as ever, agree that tech companies have unchecked power. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz threw down a challenge against the platforms during an April hearing when he said “If we have tech companies using the power of monopoly to censor political speech, I think that raises real antitrust issues.”
Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has repeatedly called for these Big Tech companies to be broken up, as they have “too much power.”
In response The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have decided to take action, to devastating effect. American Big Tech companies Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Google lost more than $140 billion in market value after the Justice Department and FTC announced impending antitrust investigations.
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