The EU’s top digital official wrote to Elon Musk Monday to remind him of his legal duty to stop “harmful content” from spreading on X, hours before the tech billionaire interviews Donald Trump live on the platform.
“With great audience comes greater responsibility,” the bloc’s internal market commissioner Thierry Breton posted on X, along with the letter laying out Musk’s obligations to combat illegal content and disinformation under EU law.
The European Union has an ongoing probe into X, formerly Twitter, under its landmark Digital Services Act (DSA) which requires digital firms to effectively police online content to protect users from harm.
“The DSA obligations apply without exceptions or discrimination to the moderation of the whole user community and content of X (including yourself as a user with over 190 million followers),” Breton wrote to Musk.
Breton said the warning was motivated by the “risk of amplification of potentially harmful content in the EU,” citing Musk’s upcoming Trump interview, and also referencing his recent inflammatory comments about far-right riots in the United Kingdom.
“We are monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political — or societal — events around the world,” he wrote.
“My services and I will be extremely vigilant to any evidence that points to breaches of the DSA and will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox, including by adopting interim measures, should it be warranted to protect EU citizens from serious harm,” Breton wrote.
Speech control ‘protects’ only those who are allowed to speak, those who have power or are designated voices of power. Speech control is legally protected narcissism. It protects the lies of those in power and nothing more.
If you think back on how many times you have been offended or badly misled by free speech, you won’t find many if you find any at all. Just pretending there is any need to censor speech is a lie.
As for X, it is a disaster. A waste of time because the algorithms, however they work, curate not just your voice but others as well, so your feed become a small echo tunnel of algorithmic repetition. Musk should have bought Reddit and removed the censorship and algorithms on that platform instead of Twitter, where he has only somewhat curated the curators, not removed them.
Reddit is capable of fostering discussions with clear contexts and promotes links to sources outside of itself, which X does not even allow without causing your voice to be muted. Right now, Reddit can be as bad as FB or X, but in some areas it can be very good. These areas are the ones where elite liars and parasites feel no need to intrude on the people’s voices. Go to any of them and notice how vibrant and informative they can be.
How often are you offended on those subs (typically apolitical)? How often do you see a need for censorship? Never. The only problem ever is a natural hive mind can develop and there can be too much silliness.
The natural hive minds you can see with regularity on Reddit are examples of basal human conformity in action. Elite censorship of speech is entirely designed to funnel people into hive minds constructed by them. The more of us who understand this, the better. ABN
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange flew out of the UK on Monday apparently a free man after reaching a plea deal with US authorities over spy charges that have dogged him for more than a decade.
In the coming hours, Assange, 52, is expected to plead guilty to a single espionage charge in a court appearance on a tiny US-controlled Pacific island and prosecutors will seek a sentence equivalent to time served.
WikiLeaks published footage of Assange being driven from Belmarsh jail in London, where he has been detained for five years, to Stansted Airport. He then boarded a private jet that landed in Bangkok, Thailand to refuel.
New Hampshire Republicans advanced legislation Friday that would eliminate all exceptions to the state’s voter ID law.
House Bill 1569 would require anyone who shows up to register to vote on Election Day to provide proof of citizenship through documents such as a birth certificate or a passport.
“Confidence in our elections means that you have found that the person that confronted you, asking you for that ballot is qualified to vote. They are a citizen,” said state Sen. James Gray, R-Rochester.
American Buddhist Net 