Europe's race to rearm is pointless if its adversaries are waging war online | Johnny Ryan
www.theguardian.com
Ireland holds the algorithm off-switch. Ursula von der Leyen must force Dublin to use it says civil liberties campaigner Johnny Ryan

This opinion piece argues that Europe should “shut down recommender algorithms” of the big US social media platforms - Facebook, X, Instagram, etc. - because the author believes that these algorithms are undermining European democracy.

The most obvious example of such an algorithm is on X, where Musk can manipulate the algorithm to boost European far-right parties, like AfD. But the author argues that other social media CEOs, like Zuck, are beholden to Trump’s anti-liberal agenda - for example, Trump “openly threatened to throw Mark Zuckerberg in jail for the rest of his life”. Therefore: “It is reasonable to assume that tech oligarchs will do what [Trump] tells them”, which may include the Trump administration pressuring US social media companies to recommend more right-wing content.

So the author says: “The EU must immediately switch off the tech companies’ algorithms on its soil, at least until they are proven safe for democracy”. Do you agree with that?

  • atro_city@fedia.io
    17·
    5 days ago

    The EU should be promoting the shit out of opensource platforms and dumping millions into them both for content and development.

    Subsidise media made by companies wholely owned by Europeans and add a clause forcing them to distribute on European platforms that host in the EU and are made available all across the EU without geoblocking. Massively promote those EU platforms on foreign social media (which is pretty much all we have at the moment) e.g pay for ads on youtube, insta, tiktok, and so on to “watch this on peertube” or whatever else EUropean we have.

    Also, what a shit headline. It’s not pointless, it’s one of the many things Europe has to do. Stop expecting perfection. Doing something is better than nothing, but you have to start somewhere instead of planning for perfection and never starting.

    • Samskara@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      The Fediverse isn’t immune to propaganda and bots. It might even be an easier as in cheaper target than Twitter or TikTok.

      Creating a bunch of superficially legitimate instances and using them to upvote stuff you like is straightforward.

      • atro_city@fedia.io
        3·
        5 days ago

        I think it’ll be more difficult to fake and account of the European commission for example as the domain cannot be captured. An official instance or person will have @officialdomain.eu or something. And mastodon doesn’t have downvotes.

        As for bot instances, those could be blocked by other instances. It wouldn’t surprise me if government instances implemented a blocklist or a functionality to only allow communication or interactions with approved instances. There is a lot that governments will be able to do, but with Xitter, Facebook, and so on, they first have to debate thing, tell the site to do something, go through the appeals process, and so on. Owning the instances would allow them to take action much more quickly.