Petition calls to ban Elon Musk's X in Europe
(ban-x-in.eu)
from FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone to technology@lemmy.world on 18 Nov 10:17
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/18703482
from FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone to technology@lemmy.world on 18 Nov 10:17
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/18703482
cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/4853884
cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/4853256
To whom it may concern.
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Petition calls to ban world hunger
Petition calls to ban war
In few years we have moved from nonsensical Musk worshipping to nonsensical Musk hating.
It’s like JK Rowling all over again.
There is a certain, disturbingly large, segment of the population which doesn’t even appear to attempt to think for themselves.
Correction, we went from fanatical Elon worship to a sudden realization, that he’s the greatest scam artist of all time (quite literally, nobody EVER burned more tax payer and inverter money) and went into sudden shock and disbelief.
we have moved to musk hating but i fail to see how all of it could be characterised as nonsensical; there are elements for sure
I never liked Musk, even when he was “In.” Even the Mars colonization meme rubbed me the wrong way, as the science does not line up with that.
It felt like a cult of personality to me. He was always a fickle jerk, a mixed bag.
You have a point though, people’s opinions were largely political, I think. Or just based on pure hope/cultism
Everyone who signed the petition should close their Twitter accounts. And write their newspapers that they would cancel their subscriptions if the articles quoted or embedded tweets. I didn’t sign any petition, and I’m already doing it. Well, sort of. I didn’t have any Twitter account ro close.
Given the former and future president of the USA’s habit of announcing policies there, that seems unworkable.
You can describe something without quoting it
And you can quote something without embedding it.
I’m not American, but even I heard about Trump tweeting like a maniac. Here in Europe, though, the media understand that politicians use social media to communicate with their supporters, and nothing else. So, traditional media usually ignores them (unless they say something clickbaity), and focuses what was said outside the social media. Perhaps the same could be applied in the US. Especially if Trump is indeed as narcissistic as he’s portrayed. When he realizes people don’t listen to him, he may change his methods of communication.
Maybe not quote, but embed. They should still quote noteworthy things on there, but don’t force us to interact with the site
but that’s what exactly embeds do. forcing you to interact with the site
Maybe I wasn’t clear in my comment. I think it’s fine if they quote what somebody tweeted. I don’t think it’s fine to have Twitter embeds in articles.
Come to think of it, I should write a uBlock origin custom rule
I see. wouldn’t the default disabled social blocking lists block that too?
another way is to have libredirect redirect the embeds to nitter. some instances still work
I see. wouldn’t the default disabled social blocking lists block that too?
another way is to have libredirect redirect the embeds to nitter. some instances still work
it was clear
<img alt="" src="https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/efc0776b-5afe-45fc-b21b-cd4c53448093.png">
There is a filter list built in.
I hate the amount of lazy journalism that embedded tweets have spawned, I will find articles that say “people are saying” something and the proof is three random tweets with about 6 likes between them.
You can always quote without giving the source. “Politician XY said that …”, instead of “Politician XY tweeted that …”
Closed it. Viva la France!
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4c9e9634-ca27-48fd-9b27-a3c2880cdb33.gif">
Agree with the first part, but news ought to still quote tweets while it exists, otherwise they cannot denounce many of the wrong things going on in there. I quote the Guardian’s email I received this week (even if I prefer quoting to embedding, as tweets get deleted, and embeds brings traffic to the site):
I actually can’t remember the last time I saw someone under 60 buy a newspaper. I think the cross over in the venn diagram is going to be pretty small.
My twitter account is just a link to my mastodon profile, with a script that posts a link to it every week or so to stop it getting banned for inactivity.
I'm glad they at least name mastodon and not bluesky as an alternative.
Whats wrong with bluesky? Ive been using it fornthe past week and its definitely more intuitive and accessible for the average joe than Mastodon.
Blue sky has an owner and investors, right?
Publicly funded organizations should be required to use open solutions.
If they want to also replicate what they post somewhere open to BlueSky and Xitter, and Facebook, so be it.
That said, I could see carving out an exception for BlueSky if it provides the full open stack (public unauthenticated HTML, RSS, federation, etc ), and only while it does so.
A lot of people and outlets have said Bluesky is open source, which is actually false. Only the frontend is open source. That being said, they do use the AT Protocol which is still experimental, but seems like less of a mess than Activitypub.
I can’t run my own bluesky instance. Its literaly the same problem as X
As much as I dislike Musk, expansion of the great firewall of Europe seems like a bad idea.
+1
They should discourage institutions from using it (and use government Mastadon instances of course). This is honestly long overdue.
They only need to expand it a little bit. Add a rule against Nazi websites, and enforce it. That’s not restrictive very much at all. Drag has gone drag’s entire life without relying on Nazi sites
Lol. That’s true. I suspect that Xitter doesn’t have the staff or engineering talent left to pivot to enforce any new rules internally. It should be possible to catch them in a constant automated ban without hitting anything worthwhile.
To operate there they would have to hire the staff back then, or not do so. That said, usually intent is all that matters, so if something gets through, so long as you showed efforts to prevent it and remove it in a reasonable manner, they would be fine.
Sure but an automated ban and manual review and removal could easily leave them blocked for more hours than not, each day.
Sure but, yeah.
Yep they should keep fining him exponentially till he leaves (he obviously will never fall in line with EU rules)
Does the article say anything about censorship? Usually bans like this are financial. So X offices would close in the EU and bank accounts seized and they wouldn’t be allowed to conduct business (eg with advertisers) in the EEA
It specifically cites Brazil as an example, that involved a complete block of the website.
More than that. The Brazil government made it illegal for it’s citizens to access the site, as well as the use of a VPN. (…m.wikipedia.org/…/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_Brazil, chapter ‘Blocking’).
I think it’s a swell idea, banning your citizens from reading information you decide is wrong.
Petition calls to ban hurt feelings
Block? No.
Ask public law institutions to not use it. Maybe.
This is all they have to do
.
Let’s at least block the government agencies from using it in favor of open platforms and protocols to communicate with its citizens.
At least give me some good ole RSS in the backend, and they could host their own Mastodon instances that people can subscribe to from other public instances.
Yeah. When public services solely use Xitter or Facebook pisses me off. We can and should make that shit illegal.
Germany did this years ago. Their government hosts a mastodon instance for various agencies
Watch the next government go back on all of that.
Here quite a few of the popular social media are banned. They’re still popular but now every schoolkid, housewife and grandpa knows what a VPN is. Every time I hear such news, I am afraid of crackdowns on censorship evasion in those places too…
Does the article say anything about censorship? Usually bans like this are financial. So X offices would close in the EU and bank accounts seized and they wouldn’t be allowed to conduct business (eg with advertisers) in the EEA
That’s just my association with the word “ban” - blocking, because that’s what I usually experienced.
Yeah that’s not how laws usually work. Most legislation can’t censor (except some very oppressive countries), so ban usually means financial
Yeah, that would be less worrisome, hope this really is the case here.
Ah change.org the platform best known for not changing anything ever.
Yeah, but they’re great at discharging the righteous indignation of people who might otherwise do something extreme like going on demonstrations or start campaigning for non-“moderate” political parties.
This way people just put their personal data next to a meaningless and powerless piece of text on a website alongside that of other people, get the feeling of release after having done something about what pisses them of, and won’t do anything further about it.
Petitions are the single greatest invention of the Internet Age to keep the masses dormant (Social Media would’ve been it if, it wasn’t that, as the far-right has shown, it can be used to turn some people into activists).
Eh, BlueSky seems to be actually gaining some traction now, enough so that celebs and brands are jumping ship, so maybe just give it a few months and let it rot.
Bsky has 20 million users, which is great, basically doubled in a month, but twitter has hundreds of millions of users. We talking a different order of magnitude.
While I definitely agree, enough momentum going both ways, alongside perhaps people choosing to leave Mastodon and Threads to go to the “winner of the alternatives” could sway this to a point where BlueSky is no longer the minnow here. Given that we’re only weeks detached from Trump’s win, I can only see it getting worse for Twitter, to the point where I can see Elon just selling it and moving on - perhaps even to BlueSky if Jack wanted a cut price deal.
FYI a lot of people on Lemmy use the fact Jack Dorsey was involved in Bluesky as a way to attack it, but that’s not super accurate.
He completely left bluesky a year ago and even deleted his account, he has no involvement with it whatsoever anymore.
He’s more of a fan of nostr, given how he is a crypto bro, that tracks.
Curves being what they are, these numbers don’t mean much. Yes twitter has more users but if bsky crosses some threshold, their user count can begin to catch up quickly.
How many bots and duplicate accounts on Twitter though?
Don’t let the garbage sit until it rots. It will attract flies and possible more garbage.
Site doesn’t load. I trust they’re talking about banning it financially, not with a firewall, right?
Op, if you want to submit a petition to the EU, you should use their portal www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions/en/home not change.org
Exactly. This is the only correct answer. Change.org petitions are as worthless as a 7 euros banknote.
Corporate nationalist social media like “X” (American oligarchy) and TikTok (Chinese oligarchy) are a danger to the sovereignty and stability of the Western world.
and the reddit Russian psy-op? certainly not helping
European politicians use X and its an assets for their governments. I doubt they are going to do much about it.
I don’t like the idea of governments banning access to a website, unless its like CSAM.
See it more like “preventing a website whose owner refuses to comply withEuropean law from operating in the EU”.
What do you mean by operating in the EU? Twitter is run from America
And it’s fine to continue to operate in the US.
But if it doesn’t abide by EU laws then it can’t operate in the EU.
America doesn’t set the worlds laws
In practice, we could sever the connection between EU internet and the rest of the internet.
Maybe whitelist a set of ideas that are allowed to pass through the great eu firewall.
Or maybe, just maybe, fine companies that commit criminal acts.
There really is a fine line between turning into an authoritarian regime and doing basic police work, right?
I understand each government can have its own regulation about what websites should be accessible. I still don’t understand how Twitter operates in the EU. It’s a part of the world wide web. My understanding of how the internet works is that users reach out to the server, which in twitters case is in the US
Twitter operates servers in the EU. They will have at least Frankfurt server. Probably UK and probably elsewhere.
It’s geographically closer, so reduces latency and server load (faster to complete a request, faster to discard allocated resources).
It also gives redundancy. If Frankfurt DC explodes, the system will fall back to the next closest DC (probably London).
So let’s say that the EU DC stops existing. And requests go over the ocean to the US.
Twitter still has customers in the EU. They are still making money from EU citizens. Because twitter isn’t free. It costs money to manage, develop and run. Twitter tries to recoup those costs via adverts and subscription services.
So let’s say that twitter is no longer allowed to extract money from the EU. The EU bans companies advertising on twitter.
Any companies that have business in the EU (like selling to EU citizens) are no longer allowed to advertise on twitter.
Paypal, visa etc is no longer allowed to take payments from EU citizens for twitter services.
Any EU service that has twitter integrations is no longer allowed to charge for twitter features.
Basically, twitter has no way of getting money from the EU.
Why would twitter spend money to access the EU population. It’s a cost sink. Dead weight.
There is no growth. Getting 50 million new EU users means a massive cost increase.
Plus paying for that extra load on (say) US based servers, and their international backbone links. (Just because you can reach a server on the other side of the world for “free”, doesn’t mean commercial services can pump terabytes of data internationally for free).
So yeh, the servers could stay located in the US where twitter operations HQ is. Twitter could disband their international headquarters, so they no longer have companies in the EU.
But they wouldn’t be able to get any money from EU citizens. And if they tried to circumvent the rules, then they can be blocked by DNS and BGP. So the only way to access twitter is by a VPN.
That didn’t work well in Brazil, and twitter caved in to the demands of the Brazil government.
I really appreciate your answer!
operate in != run from
If you want an apt example of a company ‘run from’ America not allowed to ‘operate in’ another jurisdiction:
…m.wikipedia.org/…/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_Brazil
Apparently, it works by fining users that visit the site. See chapter “Blocking”.
How nice, a government that puts criminal penalties on it’s citizens reading the (according to them) wrong things. Banning technologies like VPNs.
I still don’t understand how Twitter operates in other countries. It’s accessible because it’s a part of the world wide web. When people use Twitter are they not reaching out to the servers located in America?
They’re not accessible anymore from a jurisdiction if said jurisdiction which rules they are violating decides to change their networking policies. And because twitter likes to be accessible, twitter decided to comply with the rules eventually. You seem intentionally obtuse btw.
Some thoughts: (1) networks don’t necessarily run according to judicial borders.
(2) you also have to penalize the use of rerouting tools, which Brazil seems to have done.
(3) it became incorrect to refer to it as “world wide web”
(1) Agreed of course, but I don’t see much of an issue there. You try to get a 100% coverage on your blockade, but 99% will move twitter to compliance too. same goes for (2). As for (3), I’m not really sure why you directed that at me.
I think it’s dangerous to be unscathed by governments deciding which publishers publish “truth”, and which don’t.
To not care if the “law” applies to 100% of the population, or only 95%. Some more equal under the law than others.
I bring up 3, because the idea behind www was to counteract the points above.
Imagine the same techniques used by a government you do not agree with. It’s very scary, no?
That has nothing to do with what I was answering to OP (who seems to have a difficult time translating ‘operating in’ to ‘being reachable from’), I don’t know why you are trying to debate (?) me on something else completely. Same goes for the www, I’ve never called it that.
I’m sorry your anger doesn’t allow you to see the connection between the technical implementation, and philosophy of www, and your own answer to OPs question.
I’m not angry, that’s in your mind. You seem to have a habit of linking things that shouldn’t be linked. Good day.
fuck CSAM, but where do we draw the line?
let laws regulate society and don’t let government regulate directly.
for example, instead of banning access to X, outlaw the use of Social media in direct advertising. Make the EU market so hostile towards their business practices they can’t legally operate.
then, it’s “X” that refuses to operate within the laws we as a people have required, not just an over-reaching autocrat.
That’s a bad idea because of how reliant small businesses are on social media advertising. A regulation like that would essentially screw over every business that isn’t rich enough to go to bigger advertising venues.
Twitter is not the sole, or even the biggest social media company in Europe. It’s not even in the top 3.
The advertisement sector will be fine.
That’s what I’m trying to say. Losing Twitter isn’t a big deal.
yes… because businesses are more important than democracies…
you know, not that long ago these coverless books existed that came out every day. they had stories, news, even comics in them. and you know what? they even had advertisements in them!
social media is a convenience to business. government is not a social convenience.
Businesses are the ones that produce food, medicine, clothes, build houses, print books, provide gas and electricity, build roads, etc. There are businesses that have outlasted monarchies and democracies. I’m not a corpo schmuck but small businesses are the soul of the soul of our society.
there, I fixed it.
the purpose of any business is to be profitable, otherwise it’s a charity. businesses have zero philanthropic goals.
people make a business profitable. People make the products and services. People consume the product.
no people, no business.
no government, no people, no business.
don’t let greed cloud your judgement.
Yes a business usually consists of people and is driven by profit, you sted the obvious, but what is your point?
Do people buy their vacuums from Dyson Ltd. or from a guy named Kevin?
It’s not just about profits, it’s about accountability. That’s what the different forms of corporations represent. A singular private person can’t and shouldn’t be held accountable for every product the produce. A business is a layer of protection of limited (Ltd.) accountability. How could anybody be motivated to invent or produce anything if a single miss use of your product that causes any harm (intended or not) could lead to you directly being held responsible and possible going to jail. A business on the other hand usually has limited accountability but is also held to a much higher standard of quality and proof than a private individual ever could.
this is laughable. Corporations aren’t being held accountable for anything anymore because they have personhood rights.
People invent and produce things every day. You’re confusing yourself with mass production at scale.
no longer the case. a private individual would be put in jail (like you said) for harming one person with a product. who goes to jail when millions are poisoned by a company? Who maintains that standard of quality and proof? The same government that turns a blind eye when millions of Americans are poisoned?
But to get back on topic, People empower the business. Without the people, there is no business.
Business also managed just fine before social media advertising was a thing.
That’s true.
Now I’m imagining what the British East India Company’s Twitter account would look like
Yeah, I don’t think that banning social platforms is a good idea, unless its hosting illegal content. As bad as ““X”” is, banning it could be a slippery slope.
Although, I don’t think this change.org petition will get far.
That’s cool for the EU (probably) but there’s still the other 90% of the world.
It’s short sighted indeed.
Ah, a change.org petition . I eagerly await the sweeping improvements to life abroad.
Not going to sign it, too. Change.org is part of the problem, and not of the solution.
Just a casual bystander with no clue what’s going on… why’s change.org a problem?
Edit: ok, read more posts, understand now
I couldn’t find any posts talking about it, what’s wrong with it?
It’s like waving a disapproving finger at a brick wall, has always been my criticism.
Protests shouldn’t be so easily tossed in a bin. If you aren’t a problem, then no one has to listen to your message.
Petitions in Europe are required to be discussed when they reach a certain threshold. The platform does not matter.
even if they do nothing about the petition, it still directly shows that people care about the issue. Its just one of the things that ever so slightly could tip the scales in right direction. But yes, if people think that its all done and good by signing the petition and nobody doing anything else, you might as well yell in the wind about it. But there could be people with a bit more influence that want to do this too. Even the surveys dont get information from every single person of the populace so having many signs could help even if they dont have to immidiately put it on effect.
Has any petition here ever actually lead to any change?
They didn’t ban it already? DOn’t they have a filter list and they tell isps to block certain sites?
No.
Why stop there, why not ban Elon all together?
Petition to ban all people who think differently from me
It kind of invalidates what the EU Committee is all about. This is just stupid, and calling for a ban in a free world is more concerning than X.
How about “if you don’t like Musk, don’t use X or buy a Tesla?”
I personally don’t really like any billionaires at all, but I’m not going to get in to a hissy fit because someone uses Microsoft Windows or bought something from Amazon.
That’s all well and good, and that’s currently my policy.
But that’s an entirely different discussion than whether banning a certain propaganda platform is worth doing and would cause the intended results.
The first thought that comes to my mind is that the people in Twitter are just going to migrate to another social network. It won’t be problem solved, it’ll be problem moved.
The second thought I have is the amount of hate and comments full of misinformation on sites like Facebook. Should we ban Facebook too? And if so, where does it stop and who is it that gets to decide that a site is getting banned for “wrong think”.
Personally, I believe this isn’t so much a petition against X, but a petition against Musk, who I think wouldn’t be absolutely gutted even if X went out of business. I think he bought it with the aim of derailing anyway.
You’re more mature than some people here.
There’s absolutely no sensible reason to even consider doing this.
There’s absolutely no sensible reason to even consider not doing this.
I also don’t think banning anything is the way to go. Who don’t want to use X doesn’t have to - there is Reddit, Mastadon, BlueSky and others.
I think they should just force him to disclose his shitty algorithm
Edit: Third party, local moderators for social media should also be a standard requirement. No outsourcing of moderation.
Obviously not what they have in use anymore, but for a golden few seconds the algorithm was open source: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
Why there are always petitions to ban something, not to create something, like eu based social network everyone can join and use for free ?
Found the market liberal.
You ban stuff not because it is bad and you want something better. You ban stuff that is so bad that is actually harmful.
As with hate speech, the harm needs to be quantifiable. “I don’t like that people are sharing ideas and opinions that I personally disagree with” doesn’t cut it.
The price of freedom of speech is needing to hear things that make you uncomfortable every now and again. Deciding what people can and can’t write on the internet is a slippery slope.
The German government already has their own mastodon instance on social.bund.de
Much better alternative to a EU funded social network, as this would automatically drive critics to the assumption, that politicians are controlling the narrative and deleting critical content. Also supports the development of open source and self hosted alternatives this way.
Fascism
If someone told me “I don’t like Musk, I’m going to stop using Twitter”, I’d say “good for you”. I think it’s great when people stand up for their beliefs and put their money where their mouth is.
If someone told me “I don’t like Musk, so you’re not allowed to use Twitter”, I’d tell them to go fuck themselves. It’s none of their business whether they personally like what it is that I want to do as long as I’m not hurting anyone.
Inb4: I’m not a Twitter user and probably never will be, but I believe very strongly in the freedom of expression, even when that means I have to hear things that I don’t like.