Big tech and big government collude to ensure the 'message' remains the only thing you'll hear.
The European Union has set up an office in the heart of Silicon Valley to ensure that Social Media companies are suppressing the information it doesn't like.
On 16th of November 2022 the EU passed a new law that effectively ends free speech across the entire continent. This was the day the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) came into law. Under the DSA, very large online platforms (VLOPs) with more than 45million monthly active users – like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram – will have to swiftly remove illegal content, 'hate speech' and so-called disinformation from their platforms. Or they will face fines of up to six per cent of their annual global revenue. Large platforms must be DSA compliant by the summer, while smaller platforms will need to comply by 2024 onwards.
In order to ensure that social media companies follow the new rules to the letter the EU has opened an office in the middle of Silicon Valley. The official line is that the office is to "forge closer relationships between EU regulators and Big Tech." but commentators have pointed to the move as the EU starting to fulfil its ambition of becoming a global regulatory superpower,
The regulation of the DSA will be overseen by the Commission itself, not an independent regulator. It gives those 27 unelected individuals enormous amounts of power. The fear is that the regulations won't just be applied to social media companies when operating in Europe but the 'strict regulatory standards' will end up being adopted worldwide by both firms and other regulators, as with GDPR.
The US Government have been entirely silent on the issue, that a foreign superpower has set up office in the middle of the United States with the sole purpose of imposing their rules on US companies appears to have gone unnoticed.
The EU's Digital Services Act includes a ‘crisis-management mechanism’, added last year in a last-minute amendment. The EU Commission argued it needs to be able to direct how platforms respond to events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now, in a crisis, the ‘anticipatory or voluntary nature’ of obligations on tech companies to tackle disinformation would be deemed 'insufficient'. Under the new act the Commission has given itself the power to determine whether such a ‘crisis’ exists, defined as ‘an objective risk of serious prejudice to public security or public health in the Union’.
In simple terms they've fixed it so anything they don't like can be labelled 'misinformation' with Social Media companies compelled to take it down immediately or face billions in fines. The US, Canada, UK, and Australia are all expected to adopt the regulations, ensuring 'the message' is all you'll hear.