Ben Shapiro
There’s a new law being promoted by the European Union called the Digital Services Act. A recent article by the [New York Times]([link removed]) covered the law, writing:
_The law, the Digital Services Act, is intended to force social media giants to adopt new policies and practices to address accusations that they routinely host — and, through their algorithms, popularize — corrosive content. If the measure is successful, as officials and experts hope, its effects could extend far beyond Europe, changing company policies in the United States and elsewhere._
_The law, years of painstaking bureaucracy in the making, reflects a growing alarm in European capitals that the unfettered flow of disinformation online — much of it fueled by Russia and other foreign adversaries — threatens to erode the democratic governance at the core of the European Union’s values._
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The issue has not been Russia taking hold of the means of distribution. The issue has been that our leaders have been lying to us so routinely for the past several decades that it’s very easy to debunk the lies, leaving them wide open to charges that they’re lying to you.
Laws of this type are invariably slanted toward the political Left because the political bureaucracy decides what constitutes “hate speech.” That’s going to include citing the Bible or saying boys are not girls, for example. That type of speech is going to be banned on social media platforms if the E.U. has its way. The E.U. also has very different free speech standards than the United States. The United States has a First Amendment. No such thing applies in the E.U.
The Times continues:
_Europe’s new law has already set the stage for a clash with Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter. Mr. Musk withdrew from a voluntary code of conduct this year but must comply with the new law — at least within the European Union’s market of nearly 450 million people._
There are many people in social media circles who are very happy the E.U. is promoting this law. Why? Because if they set the standard, then the social media companies can’t be blamed.
_While the law’s intentions are sweeping, enforcing the behavior of some of the world’s richest and most powerful companies remains a daunting challenge. That task is even more difficult for policing disinformation on social media, where anybody can post their views and perceptions of truth are often skewed by politics. Regulators would have to prove a platform had systemic problems that caused harm, an untested area of law that could ultimately lead to years of litigation._
But that’s the point. If the threat is, “We’re going to lock you guys up in litigation for years on end,” what you’re going to see is social media companies immediately react by siphoning off tremendous amounts of speech. That is where this is going. And it’s working hand in hand with non-government actors like GARM, which is an advertising consortium that tells advertisers to pull their money from any social media platform that has too much freedom on it.
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Later in the article, the Times writes:
_The law defines broad categories of illegal or harmful content, not specific themes or topics. It obliges the companies to, among other things, provide greater protections to users, giving them more information about algorithms that recommend content and allowing them to opt out, and ending advertising targeted at children. It also requires them to submit independent audits and to make public decisions on removing content and other data — steps that experts say would help combat the problem._
If the E.U. decides they don’t like you distributing particular information, they will target you. It’s that simple. Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta, [wrote in a blog post]([link removed]) last month, “It is right to seek to hold large platforms like ours to account through things like reporting and auditing, rather than attempting to micromanage individual pieces of content.”
So watch for the crackdown on social media, particularly in the lead-up to the 2024 election, because the Left has created a narrative for itself, arguing the only way the Right could win is if they purvey massive amounts of misinformation.
**Ben Shapiro**
Editor Emeritus,
The Daily Wire
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