On Tuesday this week, the European Commission announced its first list of designated Very Large Online Platforms – or VLOPs – that will be subject to “content moderation” requirements and obligations to combat “disinformation” under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). As VLOPs, the designated services will be required “to assess and mitigate their systemic risks and to provide robust content moderation tools”.
Or as a subheading in the Commission announcement pithily puts it: “More diligent content moderation, less disinformation.”
As discussed in my previous articles on the DSA here and here, the legislation creates enforcement mechanisms – most notably, the threat of massive fines – for ensuring that online platforms comply with commitments to remove or otherwise suppress ‘disinformation’ that they have undertaken in the EU’s hitherto ostensibly voluntary Code of Practice on Disinformation.
Unsurprisingly, the list of designated VLOPs includes a variety of services offered by all the most high-profile signatories of the Code: Twitter, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok.
But, far more surprisingly, it also includes several platforms that are not signatories of the Code and to which the Commission appears now to be extending the Code and DSA requirements unilaterally. The latter include Amazon, Apple (in the form of the App Store) and even Wikipedia.
The Commission has even designated the favourite messaging service of every filter-crazy preteen, Snapchat! Curiously, however, WhatsApp is not named.
Since many of the newly designated platforms are not publishing platforms per se, it is unclear how exactly the ”content moderation’ requirements will apply to them.
What will ‘content moderation’ mean for Amazon, for example? That user reviews containing alleged ‘disinformation’ will have to be removed? Or will books or magazines that the European Commission deems to be vessels or purveyors of ‘disinformation’ have to be purged from the catalogue?
The inclusion of the Apple App Store is perhaps even more ominous. Will its subjection to the Code and DSA requirements provide an indirect route for the EU to demand the removal of apps of non-designated platforms that the Commission deems channels of disinformation? Telegram, for example?
And what about Wikipedia? The DSA invests the European Commission with the power to impose fines of up to 6% of global turnover on VLOPs. But Wikipedia is a non-profit that is funded by donations. It does not sell anything, so it does not have any turnover. But presumably the Commission plans to treat its fundraising income as such.
Furthermore, Wikipedia is not a publishing platform, but a user-edited collaborative encyclopedia. If it is to be subject to the EU’s ‘content moderation’ requirements, what can this possibly mean other than that Wikipedia will have to remove user edits that the European Commission deems to be ‘mis-‘ or ‘disinformation’? The European Commission will thus become the very arbiter of encyclopedic knowledge and truth.
The European Commission’s list of designated entities, comprising 17 Very Large Online Platforms as well as two Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs), is reproduced below.
Very Large Online Platforms:
- Alibaba AliExpress
- Amazon Store
- Apple AppStore
- Booking.com
- Google Play
- Google Maps
- Google Shopping
- Snapchat
- TikTok
- Wikipedia
- YouTube
- Zalando
Very Large Online Search Engines:
- Bing
- Google Search
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. This article was first published by the Brownstone Institute.
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Well when you take a vaccine that is programs your cells to create the toxin created by a virus throughout your body with very little control this will happen…
These days I wonder what a virus is because the last time I checked coronaviruses were pretty harmless common colds and now we have a killer pandemic from one?
Oh thats right, its all a lie and they are making it up as they go along…
The truth will come out when the seasonality of coronaviruses kicks in over the winter months. If we’ve already gone from 99% to 77%, I think we’re in for a rude awakening as it begins to dawn on people that the vaccination drive has not been nearly as effective as made out.
Who knows, maybe there’ll also be a new found appreciation that 99% of people are completely fine after being infected anyway and we have to move on…we’ve got 3 people off work just now with symptoms of a runny nose for pete’s sake!!!!
It would be interesting to compare the vaccinated and unvaccinated for hospitalisations, intensive care admissions and deaths for ANY reason, not just “covid” (ie a positive pcr test result). I suspect a much less favourable picture might emerge. Is it just me, or do there seem to be a whole lot of (vaccinated) people ill with a wide range of health issues at present?
Yes! That’s exactly what I’m seeing, but they are all absolutely vehement that it has nothing to do with the experimental unlicensed drug they just had injected into them
Since the beginning of this year, among my vaccinated acquaintances and friends there has been one death from a stroke, one minor stroke, one major bleeding episode, one person diagnosed with fibrosis of the lungs who was perfectly healthy last year, one person, single jabbed, who had high numbers of inflammation markers in her blood which three courses of antibiotics failed to shift and several people “testing positive” for Coronavirus.
Am I being overly suspicious?
I’m a bit worried about spike protein shed myself (though I heard pine needle tea can help), and T worry that “vaccines” and NPI’s could create the conditions for worse variants. I wonder how things are going in South Dakota – and Belarus (even if they are threatening to invade the Baltic states).
yes
The Israeli data confirms all cardiac anecdotal evidence.
I suspect that we will now live in an era of generally very poor health, with the cult members adamant that it has nothing to do with the vaccination or boosters they keep having. This is going to get very interesting, and I still believe they will somehow blame us lot for it all!
Not just you.
We really need to see figures for vaxxed and unvaxxed in fairly narrow age bands, with information about their state of health, what else they were ill with. I’m sure we never will. The government are not in the slightest bit interested in vaccine efficacy, or any other covid related data.
Now surely “our” NHS” wouldn’t cover it up, would they?
I don’t like the sound of this.
Microchips for September? Because drugs, vaccines and the mark of the beast are the way out of this (or not)…
Hotel California springs to mind.
And I ask again, what do scientists independent of pharmaceutical companies and their proxies have to say about the vaccines?
Is this the ventilator treatment that Doctors stopped using in the US because they discovered its use was lethal to the patients in some instances?
My experience at the moment is that pretty much all of the vaccinated people I know are all getting sick with covid! Which is privately very amusing as they are all committed Guardian reading covid cult members.I just had covid, as an unvaccinated persons, and suffered four days of very mild sniffles! They simply don’t work!!
Antibody Dependent Enhancement, anyone?
Guardian readers? Maybe they don’t like work…
Give me an “A”
Give me a “D”
Give me an “E”
What’s that spell?
Content that’s banned from social media!
The good news at least for team apocalypse is that at least now they will get the “dark winter” they were pining for. Yeah Team Apocalypse!
Woooooo! Oh my god.
My missus and I were double vaccinated in May (alright, stop shouting at me!). Three weeks ago she had summer cold symptoms and tested positive. Probably the very transmissible Delta variant, so transmissible that I didn’t get it!
I had a very very mild dose back in March 2020 which has probably served me better than artificial jabs.
So the point of the vaccine, sorry, experimental gene therapy, is what exactly?
I’ve said it before, but the point of the “vaccine” is
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
A coup d’etat, without people even realising. The perfect crime?
You can NEVER drug/jab a body back to health. Medicine is meant as a support while you heal.
The figures show that old people die.
We simply cannot allow that to happen! (….I’m old’ish)
That’s good news isn’t it? The 3rd shot might not cause blood clots.. but may cause infertility, autoimmune disease, heart damage and early death.. I expect by the 6th or 7th shot you actually become younger and you develop superhero powers.
The 8th shot may undo all the mistakes you have made in life.. by the 9th shot you are a millionaire, by the 10th shot you own your own home and your children are perfect. By the 11th shot your mother and father are rich and you are at Eton, with not an original or sensible or decent thought in your head, ready to run the country into the ground because ‘save the planet’…
By the 12th shot, you live as long as a greenland shark.
Are they the ones who got mistaken for the Loch Ness Monster?
maybe.. they live perhaps to be 500… cold temperatures and slow metabolisms are good for health it seems.. that and sharks are some 400 million years old, surviving whatever killed the dinosaurs.. their immune systems are such that they don’t seem to suffer much illness.. bats on the other hand also don’t suffer much illness, yet apparently they harbour lots and lots of viruses.. despite a high metabolism and body temperature their immune system doesn’t go cytokine crazy.. some species can live 30 odd years.. with very little illness..
Bow whales possibly reach 300 plus years… again, well developed immune system that has developed over 50 million years.. good thermoregulation, slow metabolism.. less wear and tear…
I expect they’ll miss the 13th and go straight for 14th – just in case…
“This phenomenon warrants further investigation.” Well, I never! What a surprise! How about buying an old banger from the guy down the road, and relying on it to get along? A similar level of trust, perhaps.
You jest, but I know many, many people who have bought cars on the basis of a promise of reliability. I try to point out that such a promise is meaningless, since you cannot buy a car that WIL BE reliable since no one knows what will happen to it tomorrow, you can only buy a car that HAS BEEN reliable, but surprise surprise, they prefer the comfort of the meaningless promise…
Did anyone else notice the headline in the Telegraph a few days ago – cardiac events at home surge by over 30%. They were blaming lockdowns but it put me in mind of something else…