When President Donald Trumpâs access to social media was suspended, he found some unexpected allies in Europe: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, who called Twitterâs decision âproblematic.â
Thatâs not because she supported what the U.S. president said and did last week. But she, and many other European leaders, do not think private corporations should have the exclusive right to decide who can say what on social media. Thatâs a decision that European rules leave to elected legislators.
Why We Wrote This
Whose responsibility is it to decide when someone should be banned from social media: private enterprise or public authorities?
The German Chancellor said the US government should follow Germany’s lead in adopting laws that restrict online incitement, rather than leaving it up to the likes of Twitter and Facebook to make up their own rules.
Since the pandemic started last year, European citizens have had to radically realign their lives to the new reality. For the most part, this has meant rapidly migrating our personal and professional lives online. With this comes a broad range of policy measures aimed at reinforcing Europe’s connectivity and heightening cybersecurity standards across 2021.
The pandemic also resulted in vastly accelerated profits for many of the tech giants, highlighting their dominance across online markets and provoking concern among competition regulators in Brussels.
This, alongside a renewed commitment to further harmonizing rules for online services, contributed to the conception and presentation of the EU’s landmark Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act ahead of the Christmas break.
Update: This post has been corrected as of August 1, 2020 to accurately reflect the details of the NetzDG.
For years, free speech and press freedoms have been under attack in Turkey. The country has the distinction of being the world’s largest jailer of journalists and has in recent years been cracking down on online speech. Now, a new law,passed by the Turkish Parliament on the 29th of July, introduces sweeping new powers and takes the country another giant step towards further censoring speech online. The law was ushered through parliament quickly and without allowing for opposition or stakeholder inputs and aims for complete control over social media platforms and the speech they host. The bill was introduced after a series of allegedly insulting tweets aimed at President Erdogan’s daughter and son-in-law and ostensibly aims to eradicate hate speech and harassment online. Turkish lawyer and Vice President of Ankara Bar Association IT, Technology & Law Council Gülşah Den