Daily Stormer The Most Censored Publication in History
The fraudulent “disinformation industry” was invented after Brexit and Trump’s 2016 win because Western elites concluded online free speech is too dangerous.
This EU study — designed to legally force X to censor more — is supremely fraudulent:https://t.co/dK2JG7VU8X pic.twitter.com/6jOu5PrOQi
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 10, 2023
Here’s Jared Holt’s Daily Beast article with a major retraction. Again, the Daily Beast is a shitty tabloid that will publish anything. Imagine how false it must be to merit a retraction.
But those claiming to fight “disinformation” are always those who spread it most. pic.twitter.com/o6QL4hvXcO
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 10, 2023
We dissected the EU report, in part to understand how they determine “pro-Russian propaganda.”
Unsurprisingly, it means “anything aligned with the Kremlin’s interests,” so any opposition to the US role in the Ukraine war counts. It’s all about requiring censorship of dissent. pic.twitter.com/oeOBUH3Lku
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 10, 2023
“Pro-Russian propaganda” might seem like a vague and all-encompassing term. Actually, it has a specific definition: it is “anything aligned with the Kremlin’s interests.”
Feel free to take a minute and consider the implications of that.
Now, we must wonder: what is the definition of “pro-Hamas disinformation”?
The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk over the alleged disinformation about the Hamas attack on Israel, including fake news and “repurposed old images”, on X, which was formerly known as Twitter.
The letter arrives less than two months after sweeping new laws regulating content on social media seen in the EU came into force under the Digital Services Act.
If Musk, the owner of X, does not comply he can face a fine of 6% of his revenues from X or a total blackout in the EU.
The logical thing to do would be to let them do the blackout, and then hope the people of this terrorist bloc demand they have some kind of freedom.
But it would cost Elon a lot of money, and it is unlikely that anyone in Europe would be demanding anything.
Instead, it would make sense to just block all Israel and Palestine related content, because they are saying “you must force people to promote the Israel agenda,” which is not a reasonable thing for a social media company to do.
Thierry Breton, the commissioner responsible for the act, wrote to Musk to urge him to ensure “a prompt, accurate, and complete response” to the request to contact Europol, the EU police enforcement agency, and “relevant law enforcement agencies” within the next 24 hours.
Breton reminded Musk that he needed to have “proportionate and effective mitigation measures to tackle the risks to public security and civic discourse stemming from disinformation”.
Following the terrorist attacks by Hamas against 🇮🇱, we have indications of X/Twitter being used to disseminate illegal content & disinformation in the EU.
Urgent letter to @elonmusk on #DSA obligations ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/avMm1LHq54
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) October 10, 2023
“Following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel, we have indications your platform is being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU,” wrote Breton.
“Public media and civil society organisations widely report instances of fake and manipulated images and facts circulating on your platform in the EU, such as repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games. This appears to be manifestly false or misleading information,” he said.
“Let me remind you that the Digital Services Act sets very precise obligations regarding content moderation,” Breton said, adding that changes in X’s public interest policies raised questions about his compliance to the new rules.
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Breton’s strongly worded letter told Musk: “First, you need to be very transparent and clear on what content is permitted under your terms and consistently and diligently enforce your own policies. This is particularly relevant when it comes to violent and terrorist content that appears to circulate on your platform. Your latest changes in public interest policies that occurred over night left many European users uncertain.
“Second, when you receive notices of illegal content in the EU, you must be timely, diligent and objective in taking action and removing the relevant content when warranted. We have, from qualified sources, reports about potentially illegal content circulating on your service despite flags from relevant authorities.”
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Breton told Musk: “We will include your answer in our assessment file on your compliance with the DSA. I remind you that following the opening of a potential investigation and a finding of non-compliance, penalties can be imposed.”
DSA can’t ever be complied with. It’s just a law that says it’s illegal to disagree with EU policy online. It’s stupid to even talk about.
You can’t do tricks like “well, Palestinians are just trying to take back their land, like the Ukrainians are trying to take back Crimea.” The DSA doesn’t contain any ideas. It just says “do whatever we tell you to do, immediately after we say it.”
I asked the Bing AI image generator to make ‘democracy vs authoritarianism’ and I think it got confused… pic.twitter.com/vgwdTaUk0c
— Julian Waller 📖 (@JulianWaller) October 10, 2023
Elvis Dunderhoff contributed to this article.
