“L’Etat, c’est moi” – “I am the state” – Louis XIV is supposed to have said. And in a contemporary echo of that famous phrase, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton repeatedly stressed on Monday that “I am the regulator” when lambasting social media networks for “not having done enough” during the recent French riots and threatening them with sanctions, including even banishment, if they should remain similarly inactive after August 25th.
Not having done enough of what? Well, namely censorship: suppression of content that the European Commission deems to have been in some way or another harmful in the circumstances. Hence, the importance of the August 25th date. For August 25th will mark exactly four months since the European Commission officially designated 17 “Very Large Online Platforms” and two “Very Large Online Search Engines”, and from that date forward, per the below timeline, the designated entities will have to be in compliance with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which is designed precisely to “regulate” online speech.
Breton made his remarks in conversation with the French public broadcaster France Info, noting that in the future the social media companies will have to be pro-active in deleting content or face sanction. “When there is hateful content,” he said, “content that calls, for example, for revolt, also that calls to kill – because we’ve seen that too, [from] individuals… they will have the obligation to delete it instantly. If they don’t do it, they will be immediately sanctioned.”
Breton did not give any specific examples of content calling for violence, much less murder. But, interestingly, when one of the interviewers repeatedly tried to point the finger at Twitter as one of the main offenders, Breton was quick to correct him, noting that the main offenders, per coverage in the French press, are rather TikTok and Snapchat.
Given the correspondence between the notably young demographics of the French rioters and the demographics of TikTok and Snapchat users, this is hardly surprising. Moreover, the content that has been widely cited as circulating on TikTok and Snapchat – and sometimes indeed reproduced in the traditional French media itself (see here, for instance) – consists not so much of calls to violence, as video documentation of the violence that has occurred.
This proliferation of videos of the French violence on social media and via messaging apps appears to be the real target of Breton’s wrath. Indeed, the Commissioner referred to it himself, even suggesting that platforms were using algorithms to make such material go viral – as if they would have to!
The indulgence shown by Breton towards Twitter is also unsurprising, since many observers (including the present author) noticed videos of the French violence posted on Twitter quickly disappearing. This suggests that Twitter was indeed acting pro-actively to suppress the material in question.
It can be wondered in passing what exactly is the justification for suppressing genuine documentation of the violence and destruction – this is, after all, a form of information, not ‘disinformation’ – and whether its suppression will not in fact create a void that will be filled precisely by inauthentic ‘fake news’. See, for example, this tweet on the burning of an ‘Alcazar’ library in Marseilles. A Twitter ‘Community Note’ correctly points out that the embedded video is of a different building. But it fails to mention that a small municipal library of that name was in fact set on fire by rioters in Marseilles.
Be that as it may, Breton noted that he had recently been to California to run “stress tests” with the American social media companies to ensure their preparedness for the DSA deadline, and he noted that he will go to China next week to discuss the same matter with TikTok. Consider the irony of this: an EU official travelling to China to ensure that a Chinese company is prepared to comply with a European censorship law!
Breton also noted that during his visit to California, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that he was going to “hire one thousand people” – presumably to serve as human censors – in order to ensure Meta’s compliance with the EU rules.
Nonetheless, the France Info journalists poured some cold water on Breton’s enthusiasm, noting that Meta does not even have any plans yet for rolling out its Twitter-alternative Threads in the European Union and wondering whether an excess of EU regulation might not be making some of the Big Tech companies “skittish”.
In any case, Breton is not wrong that he or, at any rate, the European Commission as such is the regulator. For, speaking of Louis XIV, the DSA invests the Commission, the EU executive, with what are, in effect, absolute powers to determine infractions of the law and apply sanction in the case of non-compliance.
Robert Kogon is a pen name for a widely-published financial journalist, translator and researcher working in Europe. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter.
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As the meme says: ”They wouldn’t need to censor us if we weren’t telling the truth”.
Happening everywhere of course;
”The American Left believes it has gained enough power that it no longer sees any value in maintaining protections for free speech, at least at a federal level, and has publicly switched its enthusiasm from speech to censorship. It now lovingly speaks of the valuable “speech” of government censors and of the ‘chilling effects’ of extremist judges who interfere with them.
There are still select conservative enclaves where the Left pretends to care about free speech. Should parents persuade a middle school library to pull a work of hard core LGBTQ pornography off the shelves, the Left will describe this as an attack on the First Amendment. But otherwise, freedom of speech has been buried in the same unmarked grave as freedom of religion with the bulk of the First Amendment soon set to join the Second Amendment.
Censorship is becoming speech and speech is becoming censorship. The real threat to civil liberties comes from people interfering with the speech of censors telling them to “shut up”.
In a world where governments have rights and people have none, the right to censor is the only right. And if they disagree with you, liberals will fight to the death for the right of the government to silence you.”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/07/leftists-argue-government-censorship-is-the-highest-form-of-speech
Correct, when the numbers have reach victorious levels then all this is coming to a town near you!
“EU Commissioner Thierry Breton Warns Social Media Companies to Turn Up the Dial on Censorship – Or Else”
WARNS!!!
Don’t you just love dictatorial censorship? Works eveytime!
“Or Else…. “Ve vill invade poland”
But don’t worry – Poland will perhaps be allowed to become a full member of the Axis, if the conditions are met, after the war ends.
Sorry, not related to your comment, but seems a topical parallel!
Problem: Riots getting out of control
Reaction: Anger and condemnation by the press, the public and all the talking heads
Solution: Shut down/censorship of free speech, called hate speech and incitement to violence
The same tired old method, works every time. THEY threaten us even though THEY created the problem. Most normal people don’t go about calling for burning of buildings and attacks on the police. Anyone with a half-functioning braincell can see this for what it is. It’s the NWO and the great reset in full flow.
Riots getting out of control is a symptom, not a problem – the problem is too much islam.
Definitely. Too many Musulmans. Too many Black Africans. Open borders and the great replacement.
From THEIR pov, the riots are the problem to which they can then offer the solution – was what I was getting at. Also, I am not 100% sure this is being driven by pissed off Muslims either, I think the state may be implementing the worst aspects of it.
The State most certainly has a hand in it, as they always do. The Agent Provocateurs used in France are the Black Block. It was them that took part in the majority of rioting and vandalism during the Yellow Vest protests..
I would say the problem is that society has lost all tolerance for disorder.
It’s just a few riots in a handful on neighbourhoods in the whole of France.
It’s all a storm in a teacup and it’s being amplified and blared out at the population to frighten them so that… yep… they can put more control measures in place.
The population is just sooooo stupid, gets suckered by the same trick, over and over and over again.
The gloves are off, we are in a war, whether we like it or not, for the very freedoms we won over centuries of struggle against similar but less coordinated, less global, less technology based oppression. Dressing up in suits and ties and making lofty, virtuous sounding pronouncements is the modern face of tyranny.
“we are in a war”
A point I have been making since joining DS. but always worth repeating Aethelred.
““I am the regulator” It’s a pity the person responsible for the nation’s actual safety with regard to pharmaceuticals especially injectable biotoxins, head of the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) Dame June Raine DBE, didn’t have the same attitude. She however thinks she and the agency over which she presided is an experimental injectable biotoxin enabler. Which might account for some of the non covid excess deaths that have occurring for months now.
Just to be clear, the video of the library on fire is a complete fake. I don’t know why Robert Kogon brings it into his discussion; it doesn’t strengthen his case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le77PtpC_m4
I’m happy to mislead if it helps to turn people agains islam.
Dividing and conquering is THEIR game, which they play so well and we must be alert to that. It’s designed to create this division.
That’s a really, really dumb thing to say – here of all places.
Robert Kogon explained why:
“It can be wondered in passing what exactly is the justification for suppressing genuine documentation of the violence and destruction – this is, after all, a form of information, not ‘disinformation’ – and whether its suppression will not in fact create a void that will be filled precisely by inauthentic ‘fake news’. See, for example, this tweet on the burning of an ‘Alcazar’ library in Marseilles. A Twitter ‘Community Note’ correctly points out that the embedded video is of a different building.“
The social media companies should hunker down and go full-scale uncensored. Refuse to recognise the power of likes of the EC. Mock them relentlessly online. Make the organisations and their leaders into laughing stocks. Every day, they should release millions of memes tearing apart people like Thierry Bretton. When the legal actions are presented, take pictures of Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk wiping their arses with the summonses. What can the EC do? Fire nukes at Silicon Valley?
The reason the supranational political organisations fear the social media companies is that social media and the ‘great unwashed’ public have to ability to bring them down: the EU, the WHO, the UN, all of them. The dark forces created in the mid-20th century and now perverted into dangerous transnational dictatorships are less powerful than we think and mockery is the key.
It would be great to see but wouldn’t the endpoint be the EU blocking access to any platform that defied them? They could also most likely bring sanctions to bear against any EU based firm that advertised with them.
How could they block it? People would use VPNs. If the ones they used got blocked, there would always be new ones. The firms could simply move their designated head office out of the EU. It would mean a constant moveable battlefield, but the perceptual damage would be done, as the EU would be shown to be a force of tyranny.
I can’t access rt.com from within the UK, though I don’t have a VPN. I don’t know how well VPNs work or whether they can be neutralised. I don’t know how hard it is to by-pass internet restrictions in China. I think it likely that a lot of people would simply not bother and the sites would face massive revenue losses.
You can easily access rt.com with a vpn. If the EU were to go as far as China, everyone would know and they would suffer for it. The only way to stop information they don’t want to get out from getting out would be to destroy all communications facilities globally.
I wish I shared your confidence
When the Covid shitshow started I kept thinking “they will never get away with this” and I kept thinking that until the restrictions ended and I keep thinking “why is nobody I know saying this was a load of bollocks”. I’m still waiting.
Yeah, I know where you’re coming from. I was the same through the lockdowns. When Ferguson was revealed to be bonking his milkmaid, I thought restrictions would be lifted. When I expected restrictions to be eased, Hancock brought in face masks to make us like our European enemies. When Hancock said ‘Don’t kill gran!’ to children I waited for the condemnation that never came. I noticed then-Prince Charles blanked him, at least, even if he’s a WEF stooge.
I know this sounds dumb, but I keep fervently wishing I could find the sort of wormhole/magic doorway you read about in fiction and get the hell across into another world. I never imagined, growing up that I would witness the decline of out civilisation into Mad Max territory, but that’s where we’re heading at a heck of a pace!
The social media companies don’t have the ability to bring them down, We, the people who use them, do.
They don’t fear Soc. Med companies. They fear us. The tech companies are being hijacked as tools to control us. As they already did with banks about a decade ago, when everyone was asleep and not paying attention.
As I was trying to put it, they fear the social media firms being a conduit for the ordinary man to tear down their evil cult.
Jack Dorsey talking to Russell Brand about the failures of Twitter due to its centralised model with too much control over the protocol, over discovery, and over distribution of content placed in the hands of a single company. This makes it difficult to stand up to censorious influences from governments and too dependant on corporate advertising for revenue.
He argues for, and is focused on a decentralised open source model, not controlled by any one company, with no one person in control, and much less government interference. He is funding Nostr, a twitter alternative, which may one day support twitter by removing some of the burden Twitter feels from governments, customers, and advertisers.
In future we will have to pay by subscription to to get the type of content that we want, and not the content that governments and corporations want us to see. We are already used to that. We all have to subscribe to post here.
He also thinks that alternative models on the free web that are open source can break up monopolies like the App Store and change the way we download and pay for apps and music. I wish him well.
It’s been said before but this sort of thing smacks of 1920s/1930’s Germany, and anyone who can’t see it is an idiot.
This is so apt :-
If you ever wondered how millions of ordinary decent people just stood and watched as Germany descended into Fascism – you know now.
I saw that when people were so easily manipulated into supporting the lockdowns and ratting on their neighbours. The only place I feel happy and safe is in the middle of Dartmoor.
Those millions of people you’re talking about were starving. Research why they were starving and who was behind it and you’ll get a truer picture of what’s going on today.
Too many have bought into the Nazi slogan and haven’t done their homework on the Bolsheviks..
Digital Services Coordinators assigned to internet and social media companies. That’s straight out of the CCP play book.
For years now it has been obvious that western elites and bureaucrats have been looking over at China in envy at the way they control their population and salivating at the prospect of replicating it all over here.
Expect the EU to start assigning EU bureaucrats to corporations, just like the CCP does with companies in operating in China. Political commissars ensuring companies are ‘socially compliant”.
You heard it here first.
It’s how Hitler took control of private businesses in Germany too.
The EU is fast becoming the largest concentration of unaccountable political power & wealth in the world and as a result an enormous risk to everyone. Europe is sleep walking into another catastrophe. It’s been about 70 years since the last one. These concentrations of power are unmanageable and never end well.
If there is enough censorship someone will set up a social media or other means to get around the censorship , something like, ‘Twitter Free Europe’ (instead of Radio Free Europe)?