UE : The Ministry of Truth has arrived, it's called the Digital Services Act (DSA)
Anything that does not correspond to " EU values" or is " harmful for other reasons " will have to be removed in the future. But who determines these ”European values” ?
BY MARC FRIEDRICH for The Epoch Times
Original article : https://www.epochtimes.fr/le-ministere-de-la-verite-est-arrive-il-sappelle-le-digital-services-act-dsa-2556892.html
Why can the Digital Services Act (DSA) be so dangerous and what are the effects of its implementation? This is what our guest author Marc Friedrich describes.
On February 17, the Digital Services Act ( DSA ) came into force. With the DSA, digital providers must combat illegal content. But that's not all: anything that does not correspond to " EU values" or is " harmful for other reasons " will have to be removed in the future. But who determines these European values? The vague definition of " harmful for other reasons " in particular leaves a great deal of room for interpretation and could therefore constitute a risk of abuse and limit freedom of expression.
Have we created a Ministry of Truth like in Orwell’s novel “1984”? Is DSA dangerous and opens the door to even more censorship and repression of opinions on social platforms? If so, where is the public outcry, where are the demonstrations and banner parades? Let's look at the key data together and make up your own mind.
The objectives of the DSA
Already last year, the DSA came into force for large groups like Meta, Amazon and others. Platform X (formerly Twitter) was one of the first victims last year. A few days ago it was the turn of the social media platform TikTok. Based on the DSA, the EU has now officially opened an investigation against the company behind TikTok. Since February 17, the DSA also applies to small platform operators with fewer than 45 million customers.
The three main objectives of the DSA seem at first innocuous. First, illegal content must be removed from platforms more quickly and effectively. Second, platforms must become more transparent and give users more control over their data. And third, competition in the online domain must be made fairer. So far, so good. I agree with that.
The digital controller
The companies concerned will have to fight even more actively against hate speech and 'fake news' in the future. Illegal content must be removed immediately. Users must be allowed to report content directly to the EU. On Twitter, today X, we added a new button allowing each user to report content.
ICYMI: From 25 Aug 2023, Twitter X to add button to report users to 🇪🇺EU when new decree against freedom of speech comes into force. EU to outlaw forms of political dissent.
Platforms affected: @facebook @TikTok @YouTube @Instagram @LinkedIn @Snapchat @Amazon @Wikipedia @Google pic.twitter.com/UI1drlUvnN— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) August 20, 2023
We thus all become censors and some of our fellow citizens, for the sake of political correctness, will eventually comply with it with zeal and excess of zeal. Just the flood of unjustified messages will give birth to a new bureaucratic monster which will swallow up billions of unproductive euros.
If the fight against 'fake news' is not satisfactory, the platforms will have to expect penalties of up to 6% of annual turnover. That doesn't seem like much. But in some cases, this can represent several billion euros.
Who determines what is “harmful”?
It is European Commissioner Thierry Breton – who has no democratic legitimacy – who determines what is harmful.
It's #DSA O'clock! ⏰
As of today, the DSA starts applying to all online platforms in the EU 🇪🇺
Effective #enforcement is now key to protect our citizens from illegal content and to uphold their rights. pic.twitter.com/DloOzPuQnq
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) February 17, 2024
But the DSA contains yet another novelty which is strongly reminiscent of “1984”. Concretely, this is the “crisis mechanism” that the European Commission proposed a posteriori after the Russian attack against Ukraine.
This gives the European Commission the right, in cases such as a pandemic or war, to require providers or platforms to take certain measures to “inform” the public – or even manipulate it? Online platforms could, for example, be forced to provide information to supervisory authorities and experts – without criticism or contradictory questions. The media would thus once again become the unfiltered spokespersons of governments, as in the time of Covid-19.
In other words, the European Commission, that is to say the politicians in Brussels, now have the possibility of exercising immense influence on platforms like Twitter or YouTube. What until now probably took place behind closed doors has now become completely legal.
Could it be that a legal basis is being created here to ensure that unpleasant opinions from platforms disappear even more quickly in the future? In any case, we can suspect it.
The EU therefore has the possibility to exercise a decisive influence in the future on what users can see or not see on social networks in “emergency situations” (this notion is also very vague). And it does not even need to order it concretely, because in case of doubt, the platforms will delete the content in advance so as not to be subject to a sanction.
The DSA supplemented by the DMA
In addition to the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is due to come into force in March. The Commission thus wishes to create a level playing field for all digital companies in the EU.
And on this point at least, the EU is not wrong. Internet giants such as Google, Meta (Facebook), Amazon and others have developed incredible market power, which they often abuse to rein in unwanted competitors, or more accurately to exclude them from the market altogether.
Thus, among other things, platforms are prohibited from favoring their own products or services in the ranking. “ Dark patterns” ( rigged interfaces ) will also be prohibited in the future. Dark patterns are actually attempts by providers to trick users into performing actions and clicks that they would not actually do.
Risk of censorship and narrowing of speech
It remains to be seen how the DSA will be implemented and whether legitimate and well-founded criticism of the EU, governments and NGOs will remain permitted. We are already seeing the first worrying developments in Germany, which go in a different direction. For example, just a few days ago, the police raided the home of a Bavarian entrepreneur who had mocked Green President Ricarda Lang and Economy Minister Robert Habeck on ironic posters.
Many of the statements that later turned out to be true would also have been deleted at the time if we were under the DSA. I am thinking in particular of the containment policy, the closure of schools, the doubts about the effectiveness of masks or the justified doubts about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines against Covid-19.
In addition, some criticism of the chaotic asylum policy of Merkel and the traffic light coalition (Ampel) would probably have fallen victim to the DSA. I'm also thinking of the recent football debate , where fans rightly pointed out that there are only two biological genders. Such statements could also, in theory, prompt platform operators to remove them from their platforms.
It is therefore quite possible that the large social media platforms prefer, out of an abundance of caution, to delete everything to avoid punishment. The discourse and the corridor of opinion would be even more restricted. There are even fears that the DSA will prove to be a law harmful to democracy, as freedom of expression could eventually be significantly restricted.