Polish Minister: Here's Why I Decided to Regulate Monopoly Social Media Tech in My Country

This is a viewpoint almost entirely absent in the American political class. The Democrats won't regulate Big Tech because Big Tech is their jackbooted speech code enforcer and their propaganda arm, and the Republicans won't regulate Big Tech because they're fucking taking money from them.

Hail Poland.

In Poland, we have watched with alarm as a consortium of ever more powerful, monopolistic Big Tech companies have done what was once unthinkable: de-platforming a sitting U.S. president. For us, this example--which has alarmed presidents and prime ministers across Europe and, indeed, the world--is merely the straw that broke the camel's back....

For the citizens of Poland and other countries that value true democratic accountability, we have concluded that this situation can go on no longer. As media across the world have noted, Poland has proposed a law establishing a "Freedom of Speech Council" to guarantee that Polish citizens are not arbitrarily manipulated by Big Tech companies.

...

Poland suffered under Soviet-imposed Communism for 45 years and endured decades of censorship. We are particularly sensitive to any attempts to curtail freedom of speech...

Say, do you remember when Americans were particularly sensitive to attempts to curtain freedom of speech?

It was like ten years ago, before half the population decided to lobotomize and zombify itself staring at FaceBook walls and Twitter feeds all fucking day long, and then screaming that Trump, rather than their own social media addiction and consequent diminished-executive-function brains, is the reason they're so anxious and miserable every minute of their miserable, fearful lives.

We do not seek the power to remove any content from social media; rather, we simply want to ensure that lawful content is not removed. The problem of social media censorship is much more systemic than the mere instance, however monumental it may be, of the permanent de-platforming of a sitting U.S. president. Ordinary citizens are finding their content regulated by invisible agents behind computers far, far away.

Good for Poland. Maybe we can ask them to send scholars here to teach us what America used to be like.

Meanwhile, in the American "democracy"...

Gabbard then discussed her recent legislation that would reform section 230, which would remove the broad protections provided by the law and make things a bit more precise in what Silicon Valley giants can get away with.

It seems like a pretty obvious move so why hasn’t it been done yet? Gabbard lets us in on a little Capitol Hill secret.

...

Gabbard notes that despite all the committee hearings and big talk, nothing has been done. So why?

"It goes to money," said Gabbard.

"I've seen it happen," she continued. "Google will have a bit reception and members of congress will go and pick up their checks. Facebook will have a big reception and they'll go and 'hey, where’s my check?'"

Amazon is claiming that s.230 somehow permits it to break an iron-clad contract with Parler and be immune to a suit for breaking a contract.

That's what she means by "making section 230 clear." It's a sloppily written clause which the Monster Tech companies are claiming gives them blanket immunity to every and all lawsuits.

A reform of the clause would also specify that, for near-monopoly companies only, that a minimum level of fairness in application of their alleged "rules" will have to be guaranteed to keep any immunity at all. A reform would not end all liability -- it would keep it for the 99.9% of platforms which are not so dominant as to be effective monopolies, and impose a minimum set of procedural protections for users of the monopoly platforms.

It does not mean "ending 230 protection for Ace of Spades, National Review, and the New York Times," as the paid-off corporate shills claim it means.

Conservative, Inc. is either ignorant itself, or just paid-off enough to pretend to be ignorant, when they continue mouthing the COMPLETE LIE that a "repeal" of s. 230 means that every platform can suddenly be sued for what other people write on it. No, a "repeal" of s.230 would be executed simultaneously with a reformed, rewritten, sharpened s.230, which would guarantee the current s.230 immunity from defamation from what users write to every non-monopoly platform, and even offer the same s.230 protections to the monopolies, so long as they afford users very, very basic procedural rights.

(Compare to the big leftist lie that any "repeal" of Obamacare would just implode the whole system -- the insinuation being that Obamacare would be repealed without any reformed legislation to replace it. That's the same hustle the corporate shills at National Review and Heritage and other K Street lobbyists are running on you now. It's such a stupid, obvious, undignified lie that the people telling it either think that you're stupid, or wish to insult you by implying you're stupid enough to believe the absurd lie they're telling.)

If the monopolists don't want to avail themselves of the new, modified s.230 immunity by setting up procedures to insure fairness in the exercise of monopoly power: then fuck them.

I want to repeat this: Every time you see another asshole from Conservative, Inc. mouthing Google's lie that "an end to section s.230 means that mom's recipe blog can be sued for defamation due to a comment!," that is a fucking lie, and either they are 1, dishonest shills for Google repeating their lie for a paycheck or 2, are fucking pig-ignorant know-nothings and the fact that they will continue endlessly repeating a silly lie without ever once fact-checking it (beyond asking Google's PR team if it's true or not) means you should never, ever trust a single thing they say to you again.

posted by Ace at 06:10 PM

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