16 Apr 2021
The Hungarian government has warned against Big Tech oligarchs’ moves to dominate the public square online through the arbitrary and opaque enforcement of community guidelines in their view, a kind of “pseudo legal system”.
“If we are unable to control the activities of the tech giants that are building a pseudo legal system, they will rule our life and force us into a bubble,” warned Judit Varga, the Minister of Justice in the national-conservative government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Minister Varga also questioned “whether these guidelines are in tune with the principles of the rule of law” and sounded a note of caution over the “move to reduce political content” on Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, questioning whether the platform would apply double standards to its users rather than treating everyone equally in comments to the 21st Century Institute.
23 Jan 2021
Britain’s Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was censored from Facebook on Friday, as Silicon Valley tech giants turn their censorship apparatus upon the radical left in the U.S. and the UK.
The leftist party claimed in a statement that they were “silenced” by Facebook for expressing opposition to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and expressing support for Black Lives Matter and Palestine. Facebook did not give a reason for shutting down the SWP’s page.
Facebook “bowed to pressure” from “socialists, trade unionists and campaigners”, and reinstated the party’s main page after a short period, the SWP said in a statement.