EU absolutely is a country.
I’m an American and I think America social media should be banned.
That is, closed-source, centralized for-profit social media platforms that will inevitably devolve into ads and data collection machines should be banned.
The problem isn’t the country that hosts the platform. The problem is the incentive structure for social media to profit off its users.
Platforms that are either FOSS, run by non-profits, or pay-to-use don’t have an intrinsic incentive to exploit its users and can, in theory, be run ethically and sustainably.
At least anything that has anything to do with Trump or Muskyboi, yes.
No, not if they follow our laws. That being said I don’t use much social media.
How could you make sure that closed-source code follows our laws? That it has no back doors for spying and sabotage, and that social media feed shaping algorithms have no bias and shadow-censorship for mass manipulation? You can’t, you need to ban it.
I wouldn’t support it because I don’t like censorship.
Fuck no. The Americans provide 90% of our entertainment and they’re actually fun people to interact with and chat with (the ones that aren’t wearing MAGA hats that is). What am I gonna go without Americans on social media? Talk about fucking Table Mountain? Join the Europeans in looking down on the USA for everything and always acting like their own shit doesn’t stink?
Fuck that, I’d start using VPNs.
They can join us on non-American social media.
Ah that’s a fair compromise. In that case, assuming they were all going to join, I’d go for the non Elon / Zuck / Spez run platform for sure.
That just makes me think, this is a strange question for the fediverse because I’m pretty sure a fair amount of instances aren’t American run already.
I can’t really get away from a ‘benevolent dictator’ mindset on this, I support good things and don’t support bad things. Good and bad being defined be me alone. X and Meta feel like bad things to me so away they go. So the following feels like post hoc justification of the above, right?
I oppose oligarchy, X and Meta are products of oligarchs and as such wouldn’t oppose their ban.
A more objective, or at least utilitarian justification is that oligarchy reduces total welfare by overconsuming limited resources for the benefit of the few. Propaganda for such inequity is unethical and should be banned.
Yes. Current oligarch-owned USA considers Europe an enemy because of its liberal and leftist values. Look how they’ve already turned us, famously allergic to fascism, towards fascism once again.
EU must ban all US-made smart products for its own safety. All closed-source software and electronics that can be used for strategic manipulation and sabotage – Google, Apple, Amazon, all of it.
These are in every European citizen’s pockets, desktops, and server rooms. They know way too much and have every opportunity to manipulate the most intelligent people to never meet each other, or stumble upon important information on social media, dating sites, job sites, etc. The black box recommendation algorithms in the control of one country enables the slow, strategic destruction of Europe by billions of unnoticeable manipulations. CIA has done this shit before, and now it’s being given more power than ever to do so.
China banned that shit, and China has been successful partly for its detachment from US far-right propaganda.
We have functional, clunky open-source software that could easily be fitted for any purpose with the money we waste propping up foreign monopolies sabotaging us. Europe has taken a huge risk. I suspect bribery.
I agree with everything you said except this bit:
China banned that shit, and China has been successful partly for its detachment from US far-right propaganda.
China loves US far right propaganda, the amount of Chinese people reeeeing about DEI or wokeism or the LGBTs, and fellating the South African Nazi who inherited wealth from an apartheid labour emerald mine and (for some reason, still) J. Lopsterson is kind boggling.
The common view in China is that the US is too progressive and needs to clamp down on minority rights and immigration… The mind boggles.
But yes, also fully fuck US social media and tech monopolies.
But the EU had taken risks so far as we think when push comes to shove we’ll be on the same side as the US, ignoring that the US still seems to think realpolitik is an appropriate course of action. Never trust a realpoliker to have your back.
Yes. I’ve already started replacing everything I can with Europe- or Japan- or Korea-made stuff. We have to learn to be self-sufficient and vigilant. Latest was my decision to ditch stability.ai, which is anyway the most horrendous collection of dark patterns I’ve ever seen, with dezgo.com , which is French and as transparent as can be.
Depends. Not all of them are bad. Take pinterest for instance, it’s harmless. And youtube is too valuable to lose. But X? Yes, X should go.
I heard there is talk of a projects for the EU to increase its digital sovereignty. Now would be a great time for those projects to come to fruition.
As for me, if this means that there’ll be an EU-wide reboot of Hyves, I’d be thrilled. Extra so if, on the back-end, it works on a Federated system.
I’m all for free speech but when it’s heavily skewed and unfairly moderated I support a ban. Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Xitter should just be removed.
From the US as well, as I’m sure you meant. But just for extra emphasis.
Nah, I’m from Iceland maaang
No no, I mean that you would support removing those things from the US as well as non-US locations. Sorry unclear.
Dude I’m an American and I would support a ban on American socially media in my country.
No - just like I don’t want to ban people having a conversation in a pub about a topic I don’t like even if they just tell lies to each other.
If it was up to the EU we’d still believe there was no chance in the world the Corona Covid virus could have ever come from a Chinese lab and even suggesting it should have you banned from social media. Free float of ideas and let the best argument win.
How about when one of the people in the pub conversing is an enemy agent in a cold war, always telling lies?
That would be the equivalent of what we do now: we let foreign social media govern who of us converses with whom about what, by shaping our feeds with black-box recommendation algorithms.
I still don’t understand how it ever was a controversial thought. Like, there was a virus studying lab nearby, even if you don’t have any proof, it should never be labelled as a conspiracy, given it’s pretty viable theory.
It was my personal theory since the beginning - a designer virus accidentally released before it was finished.
China was frothing at the mouth any time someone mentioned it.
Australian politician said “there should be an investigation into wuhan” and China slapped a 100% tarrif on Australian wine IIRC.
Considering they’re being actively and without denial used to fuck us over, yes. I’m not going to play the censorship card. The US is now no better than Russia, there’s no reason we should treat them better. US platforms are now literally an offensive weapon, Musk already started riots over fake news and is directly and openly meddling in our politics. This shit needs to stop. Just like we blocked RT news, this needs to go.
It’s in the same vein like Trump threatening military action against Greenland. Trump is literally committing extortion under the treat of war. The US is an actively hostile nation that targets everyone including their own allies. Like what the actual fuck? How did we get here? We need to decouple from the US as soon as possible. I’d go as far as compare the US to a ravid animal on the international stage, I’m absolutely mortified by what’s going on.
absolutely. here’s the petition for EU: https://www.ban-x-in.eu/
No, because regulation works; or can work. We can require them to follow our laws because they’re invested in our market too.
There are regular fines for GDPR violations for example; it just feels like our checks and fines need to happen faster and harder.
China regulates their platforms like TikTok differently in their own country than outside. We can require the same.
That would still leave social media in the hands of foreign corporations. I’d prefer stuff like Lemmy and Mastodon.
Tons of bots here would have the same impact
How do you regulate closed-source code to be free from back doors for spying and sabotage, and black-box feed shaping algorithms to not have bias and shadow-censorship for mass manipulation?
Don’t rely on enemy services in a cold war, no matter how much they seem to follow your regulations.
For one, you can make it illegal for them to be a “black-box” in the first place
black-box feed shaping algorithms
Recent EU legislation already requires insight into feed algorithms. They’re not allowed to be black-box on huge platforms.
Back-doors is another issue, but depending on the kind of personal data, EU legislation already requires separation and different levels of protection.
If data being sent to the US can not be considered safe, it can not be transferred without explicit and informed consent. US firms create EU firms to have regional legal entities. They can store private data locally, within the EU.
1.Provide a code that’s not the one running
2.Then commit to use the code you provided
3.Change the code back again right after the investigation stops.
With all delays you can legally add to the process, by the time, you’ve helped electing enough neo-fascists around, who all rely on you, to shut down the whole case.
