EU absolutely is a country.
Yep
I am American so I can’t really answer but what would count as American social media?
I feel like it would be most large social network sites and an unpredictable amount of smaller ones
monopolistic social media owned by big tech american companies, like X, Instagram and Facebook.
…can you help ban them in the US, too, please?
I sure hope everyone who wants to ban these things actually has plans to create their own content or Lemmy’s gonna become quite empty.
Surely squeezing people out of social media giants would bring many more people to Lemmy?
empty-er
I believe censorship is harmful to civilization.
So you support the ban
No?
Do you believe the government should intervene if a popular fast food chain started adding lead paint to their special sauce? Or would that be overstepping?
Libertarians have no concept of how the real world works. But more amusingly, they seem to be unaware that the vast, vast, vast majority of the world doesn’t want what they’re selling. And with all of their talk of not wanting to force things on people, they sure seem happy to force their own ideals on them. See the town they took over in New Hampshire by moving there en masse to force libertarianism, The town where they decided to end trash pickup and then the bears took over.
Then you support censorship. Do you think those social media companies didn’t already have mechanisms in place for censoring content in other countries? All they had to do was flip the switch on inauguration. There’s a reason why Zuckerberg was at the inauguration.
Oh I see your point. it’s a natural consequence of any platform that’s capitalism first. A big part of why I’m on this platform. But I feel it’s not helpful to block another platform for their policies.
It’s more important to educate people to practice critical thinking.
Then you wouldn’t mind if your neighbor put your picture and address all over these social media sites telling everybody the (I hope) lie that you’re a pedophile, right?
Or do you think that maybe there is some nuance here?
Well, EU is not a country, but yeah, they should either comply with our rules (which currently neither one of them does), or get fucked out of here.
I hope some local, ActivityPub based service would appear in the vacuum.
No. But a ban on algorithms would be nice.
Oh yes! Build Lemmy entirely from one line of lambda calculus.
While we’re at it, the vegans can stop consuming inorganic chemicals.
;-)
I hate how in common parlance “algorithm” has become synonymous with “recommender system”, when it’s so much more basic of a concept. But whenever I used to gripe about it, or inform people of the more specific terminology back on reddit I was downvoted. So thanks to you for bringing it up first.
I suppose you got downvoted because it’s such an ‘Um actually it’s GNU/Linux’ thing to say. You are surely technically correct, but most people understand what’s implicated and don’t appreciate a know-it-all correcting them.
For myself, I don’t care. I just learned a new name for social media algorithms with ‘recommender system’.
I bet you actually know what I am referring to ;-)
I do. Algorithms to target media to people according to individual data, typically for outcomes that benefit the company and advertisers rather than the consumer.
And I know that people against ‘chemicals’ in their food, are meaning industrially manufactured chemicals, typically for increasing appeal of the food with decreased cost, rather than fot the health of the consumer.
Still, the method to sort a list is an algorithm, and salt is a chemical, and salbutamol is a drug - and whilst I’ve gotten used to the latter two in “oh no I don’t want this” parlance, using ‘algorithm’ to mean only that sort of algorithm still feels a bit absurdist to me.
I think regulation would be the proper course of action, here. I mean neither do we ban American cars in Europe. We just say they have to play by our rules or they can’t do business here. So I wouldn’t support a ban based on country of origin. But regulation what they can and can not do.
How do you regulate closed-source code to be free from back doors for spying and sabotage, and black-box feed shaping algorithms to not have bias and censorship for mass manipulation?
Don’t rely on enemy services in a cold war, no matter how much they seem to follow your regulations.
I think that works like all other regulations. Like for example food, chicken, cars and machinery. You take samples and check them. Or have a court decide to have a look at the paperwork…
And I don’t view myself as the enemy in a cold war. I’m opposed to the current administration of the USA. But that’s pretty much it. I’m not necessarily in active combat against the economy… Well… I am against privacy invading platforms. But because they invade privacy, and not because they are from a certain country.
Twitter is not a social media anymore, it is a propaganda platform. There are regulations for media in civilized places. Twitter does not respect the law, thus it shall be banned.
If it were up to me it would be seized, because there is a public interest to this platform. Seizing it to make the algorithm transparent, fair and legal.
I really hope the EU will ban it, but I’m afraid they will ask firmly for “some changes”, and claim victory over whatever “small change” is in reality. Their investigation took too long and the lead was replaced already. Then they will declare that “recent events and information were not taken in account” and go on for another N years of investigations.
Yeah. It would help usher in a new era of social media and communities. Fb, insta, tiktok, reddit have killed smaller communities and websites. And I miss them. Internet needs to die to be born again.
No. And I would continue helping people evade whatever censorship a government tries to impose on them.
Not censoring content, just banning the giant-corp black-box feed shaping algorithms pushing fascist propaganda.
I’m way too familiar with liberals labeling everything they don’t like as “fascist propaganda” :)
So, still no.
Based
naah fuck that, I think the internet should go back to being as unregulated and wild as possible
Removed by mod
That means no big platforms, but instead smaller niche sites.
If big US tech companies exist, we can’t have a wild and free web.
People have lost their minds because of a recommender algorithm and echo chambers. Ai agents are going to tear us to shreds.
For-profit social media, certainly. I don’t trust it anymore. Astroturfing, data-harvesting, I feel like they’re all made to fuck us over in some way.
Astroturfing, data-harvesting, I feel like they’re all made to fuck us over in some way.
Voice of Ron Howard cuts in: “They were.”
Agreed
EUian here. I tend to say no, with a big “but” (insert Sir Mix-a-Lot joke here): I would expect legislation to govern effective content moderation by the platforms. No cutting corners to save money.
I’ve heard some great ideas around making algorithms open, splitting platforms apart (Meta world have to divest one of Instagram or Facebook), and splitting businesses apart (Google search would need separate ownership from YouTube), etc.
no, i support an open internet. censorship is stupid and generally easily worked around. which usually leads to an escalation to make it more and more difficult, until you have chinese-style internet.
The aim of the ban is not censorship – it’s to free ourselves from the purposely biased feed shaping algorithms mass-manipulating our populace. The content would be allowed, but it would be promoted by human upvotes, not corporate and CIA interests.
So not easy to work around and by far most of the population will not do it, so are not exposed to whatever is blocked, so the blockage works…?
I would not. Why? It won’t fix anything. People would just switch to TikTok or Telegram or something, which is not that much better
Surely the banning government would recommend Loops, Pixelfed, Lemmy, Mastodon, and Signal.
