(WND)—Government censorship of people’s ideas, statements and thoughts is flourishing not only in the United States, according to a new report from the Foundation for Freedom Online.
In America, the Supreme Court essentially gave such First Amendment-trashing operations a pass, in the recent Murthy lawsuit, by claiming that states and individuals weren’t being injured by the instructions from the Joe Biden administration to social media companies on what ideas to suppress.
That ruling, killing the case because the plaintiffs didn’t have “standing,” allows Biden administration officials to continue to give censorship instructions to social media, to even coerce and threaten them, so they shut down ideas Biden dislikes.
But that’s minor next to what’s going on in Europe, the report explained. There, there’s a new censorship “superweapon” in place. Ready to use.
The foundation report cited Europe’s new Digital Services Act, which creates a “unified framework for government-directed content moderation across the European Union.”
Each country now has a “digital services coordinator” with the power to penalize online platforms if they fail to adequately address “systemic risks,” the report pointed out.
Included is “hate speech” and “misinformation,” which is known to include speech that is correct and reasonable, but just conflicts with the politically correct talking points. Comments, for example, about there existing in science two sexes, male and female, has been condemned as both hate speech and misinformation.
“These official speech commissars can deputize third party entities to act as ‘trusted flaggers,’ empowering the global network of NGOs, research institutes, and private companies that make up the censorship industry,” the report said.
The act actually went into effect at the beginning of the year, and is “the European Union’s flagship online censorship law,” the foundation said.
“Other than China’s Great Firewall, it is arguably the most elaborate and wide-reaching instrument of government control of online content in the world.”
It categorizes its targeted communities as Very Large Online Platforms and Very Large Online Search Engines, and can be used to impose fines “for non-compliance” of up to 6% of a providers’ global annual turnover.
Those corporations, under the law, are required to “identify, analyze, and assess systemic risks” and then install procedures to oppose those “risks.”
“In other words, the EU wants platforms to identify and suppress content proactively — something that, realistically, can only be accomplished at scale using AI censorship tools,” the foundation reported.
Included in its vast overreach is information dealing with “public security and electoral processes,” “gender-based violence,” “discrimination” or “illegal content.”
Also “hate speech,” which, the foundation confirms, “has been used as a pretext to criminally penalize political candidates and members of the public for political expression in a number of European countries.”
Also, the law boosts the censorship industry by requiring for “vetted researchers” to have access to the data from platforms, opening the door for more censorship.
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