European regulator Thierry Breton shared a stern letter to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on Thursday, claiming his office has “indications” that the platform is being used to distribute disinformation and illegal content around the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Breton serves as the European commissioner for the internal market. He said TikTok must be “timely, diligent and objective” about removing misinformation, particularly since minors often turn to the platform as a source of news.
Breton issued similar letters to X owner Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week.
“First, given that your platform is extensively used by children and teenagers, you have a particular obligation to protect them from violent content depicting hostage taking and other graphic videos which are reportedly widely circulating on your platform, without appropriate safeguards,” Breton wrote in the letter.
While we’re waiting, did musk respond? His 24 hours are over
Auto-replied with a poop emoji probably. That's a thing the twitter press office does apparently.
In Musk's defense, it would be hilarious if twitter's response to the EU, the German authorities and others is a poop emoji, and this is the final straw that results in the EU handing out the maximum fine of 300 million dollars, and Germany handing out the potential maximum fine of 30 billion euros under NetzDG legislation for the 600 cases that had been reported by april.
30 billion euros fine
Holy shit, I want to see this happen. It'd probably be the final nail in the coffin for twitter.
That’d put him, like, $70B underwater overall on his purchase of Twitter
Lmao :D
Maybe a bit unrelated, but where does the $30bn go if it is fined and paid?
Shared between EU countries I'd guess, if not then hopefully to my pocket lol.
nope. The 30B are from the NetzDG, which s a uniquely German law, so the Money will go to Germany.
now the 300M from the EU law:
i have only read the Law a bti, but as far as i understand it, the EU itself doesn't fine Twitter, but instead just allows iits Member States to collect fines (that collectively don't go above 6% of annual revenue)
maybe you can understand it a bit more: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?toc=OJ%3AL%3A2022%3A277%3ATOC&uri=uriserv%3AOJ.L_.2022.277.01.0001.01.ENG
EU handing out the maximum fine of 300 million dollars
eurodollars?
C’mon, choom, get with the times.
A few of the Germans I regularly speak to keep calling them bucks so maybe?
probably because you'd be confused if he called them "Mäuse" lmao
He is behind seven proxies on Starlink somewhere deep in Nevada, they can't get him if they wanted
They can stop him doing business in Europe.
Not for long.
Imagine the uproar when EU citizens can't get their addiction fix.
All EU needs to do is spin-up national mastodon instanstance. Germany AFAIK already did it.
That would be nice, but I don't think they're ready to give that much power over to free technologies.
Multiple EU governments already did.
The Netherlands as well for example.
We would be grumbling, but alternatives would pop out of the woodwork in record time.
After which Xitter would be regarded the same as MySpace.
but alternatives would pop out of the woodwork in record time.
No they wouldn't. But I guess we'd have to test to see.
This is true. My manager is an idiot and a social media addict.
For those wondering how much this would cost, here's a techcrunch article about similar threats to twitter:
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/06/elon-musk-twitter-germany-hate-speech-takedowns/amp/
Key points:
- The EU could fine twitter up to 6% of global annual turnover, which would amount to roughly 300 million.
- But that's just the EU. National governments can also issue fines. For example, NetzDG fines can be as high as 50 million per case(!!!), which means twitter's facing a fine of up to 30 billion for the 600 cases they were dealing with in april. Almost certainly more since then.
TLDR: stuff like this is potentially an existential threat for social media companies. Not just a cost of business and something they can ignore.
I feel like this is the first time in almost 20 to 30 years that I'm seeing a regulatory body impose serious consequences for non compliance to a private corporation. I'm not holding my breath that anything changes.
GDPR has been used to similar effect with comparable penalties - https://dataprivacymanager.net/5-biggest-gdpr-fines-so-far-2020/
The EU does it quite a lot. That is what happens within a system where corporations don't have free range.
Or else ? Give another 24hours?
A fine of about 6% of their global revenue (not just profit)
Can you please share the source ? I can't find anything about the 6% fine.
Chinese ultimatum
You have hurt the feelings of 448 million Europeans.
Misinformation? On TikTok? A platform full of idiots who will believe anything?
Say it ain’t so!
Yay, an other 24 hour deadline.
I'm loving these. Really makes them sweat because they can't put hundreds of lawyers on it in order to spin their answer however way they want. There just isn't enough time. So they will need to be truthful.
Yeah, EU casually handing out demands for to anyone around. Kinda glad they do.
I'm interested in what misinformation they are referring to.
Hopefully all of it
Posting Arma 3 videos. Israel don't have F22 Raptors; yet…
Probably the same as Xitter:
Mostly the video's of atrocities from other wars and videogames that claim to be from this war.
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Seconded
I'm just waiting for the Twitter from Elon and friends threatening to coup the EU…
and what about newsroom?
Look at that, speech that goes against the mainstream is being pushed out. It’s almost like there’s an incentive for states with a history of financially and materially supporting Israel’s apartheid to hide the truth and manipulate narratives in their favor…
speech that goes against the mainstream is being pushed out … there’s an incentive for states with a history of financially and materially supporting Israel’s apartheid to hide the truth
Article:
“First, given that your platform is extensively used by children and teenagers, you have a particular obligation to protect them from violent content depicting hostage taking and other graphic videos which are reportedly widely circulating on your platform, without appropriate safeguards,” Breton wrote in the letter.
Ie. one of the things they're asking TikTok to not show children, is videos of Hamas taking hostages. Videos which would in fact help Israel's case, not hurt it.
Look, don't take this the wrong way, but when was the last time you read a full article and not just a summary?
Because it sounds like you may be functionally illiterate, given you jumped to the wrong conclusion so easily. Perhaps spend a little less time on the phone and social media, and more time reading full length articles or maybe a book or two. You're certainly not alone in this, it's a rising and worrying phenomenon, but something you personally can actually do something about.
That isn't misinformation
Sometimes I wish it wouldn't let you reply until a certain amount of time after you've clicked an article. Because I feel like a lot of people just jump right into the comments and start talking without reading.
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"Think of the children" is the ultimate bullshit excuse when it comes to censorship by authoritarians, be they liberal, conservative, moderate, or anarchistic.
horseshoe theory
there are no liberal or conservative authoritarians. there is only one time of authoritarian even if they act like they either either liberal or conservative
Horseshoe theory is not a useful method of political analysis, nor is the left-right spectrum it is founded on.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
This vid explains in more detail
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Authoritarian comes in many flavors, and they all have different paths they take that end up with the same result, consistently increasing oppression of personal freedoms in the name of various types of safety or morality or justice or ethics. Anyone can adopt authoritarian ideals if they get to comfortable repeating rhetoric without applying any thoughtful considerations.
Horseshoe theory is something for people who refuse to actually educate themselves on ideology. Often espoused by ignorant people who are so thoroughly de-politicized that they think they have no ideology, never noticing that that thought it itself is something only someone extremely ideologically captured would have.
I love how you came for blood but dress it up as if you are being reasonable.
So, I imagine you realize that nearly all combat footage is available on TikTok. Footage of murders in the Ukraine/Russia war, videos of drones dropping grenades on people from above, videos of burning bodies in bombed out cars… videos of Israeli settlers kidnapping children from off of the streets and beating them to death… it’s all there. Why is this treated so differently from that? Aside, If showing oppressed people taking actions to liberate themselves hurts your opinion of them, you already were on the wrong side of history.
In the article:
Under the European Union’s newly enacted Digital Services Act, TikTok must monitor and remove illegal content such as terrorist content or illegal hate speech. TikTok also has to detail its protocols for doing so.
Wikipedia:
Ie. they're sending out warnings under recently enacted legislation.
Why is this treated so differently from that?
Apart from the legislation being new, it isn't. They've been warning companies about this for a while now, before the whole Israel-Hamas thing started. Some examples:
TechCrunch, April 2023:
US news, January 2023:
You keep missing essential bits of the article and not connecting the dots.
Notice the weasel word of terrorism? So, what Hamas did was terrorism, but what Israel does on a daily basis is just what… geopolitics? I’ve yet to see a state that calls to ban Israeli nationalists from platforms for spreading complete falsehoods, like the whole beheaded babies lie that’s going around now (and being amplified by the president of the United States). That is definitively misinformation, and the use of such falsehoods to attempt to justify Israel’s response is itself an act of terrorism, using fear and intimidation to pursue political goals.
They released proof of the murdered babies thing today. Feel free to check my comment history for a link if you want. The PM of Israel posted some of the pictures on X.
That wasn’t my claim, I said they’re spreading misinformation claiming that babies are being beheaded, and the president of the United States is amplifying that claim, on National TV to boot. Something which no one has proof of, not the Israeli government, not the American government, no one.
That is sad though, I haven’t seen the dead babies myself yet, thankfully.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I'm saying they literally provided proof today of those dead babies, some of which were beheaded. It makes sense Biden would have been shown them before they were made public, too.
I said they’re spreading misinformation claiming that babies are being beheaded, and the president of the United States is amplifying that claim, on National TV to boot. Something which no one has proof of, not the Israeli government, not the American government, no one
This is exactly what I am claiming is incorrect. (Writing this to be absolutely clear)
Edit: found a really good article about it https://www.reuters.com/world/nato-ministers-shown-horrific-video-hamas-attack-2023-10-12/
Edit 2: in the article it says the white house later clarified Biden did not see the images, this is incorrect. The white house correspondent said it could not be confirmed, not that he had not seen them. Those are two very different statements lol.
You betcha’
LOL it's not like there is room for interpretation on objective truth. Mainstream = what we see, but you want us to disbelieve our own eyes.
What objective truth would that be? That Israel is an apartheid state that has engaged in active genocide for decades?
It’s fun that you like to state fact as if it were ridiculous.
