Musk given 24 hours to address graphic images of Hamas attacks
Musk given 24 hours to address graphic images of Hamas attacks
European Commissioner Thierry Breton and the UK’s Michelle Donelan want Elon Musk to get a grip on gruesome Israel attack videos posted on X.
Elon Musk has until the end of Wednesday to respond to demands from Brussels to remove graphic images and disinformation linked to the violence in Israel from his social network X — or face the full force of Europe's new social media rules.
Thierry Breton, the European Union commissioner who oversees the bloc's Digital Services Act (DSA) rules, wrote to the owner of X, formerly Twitter, to warn Musk of his obligations under the bloc's content rules.
If Musk fails to comply, the EU's rules state X could face fines of up to 6 percent of its revenue for potential wrongdoing. Under the regulations, social media companies are obliged to remove all forms of hate speech, incitement to violence and other gruesome images or propaganda that promote terrorist organizations.
Since Hamas launched its violent attacks on Israel on October 7, X has been flooded with images, videos and hashtags depicting — in graphic detail — how hundreds of Israelis have been murdered or kidnapped. Under X's own policies, such material should also be removed immediately.
This is some "quality" reporting. Nowhere does the EU says to remove "graphic violent images", it's only asking for transparency in what gets removed and the removal of disinformation and calls to violence.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Modern "journalists" are almost always scum.
Getting rid of misinformation is great.
Getting rid of accurately reported, gruesome images because of a government mandate flies in the face of the core principles of free speech. And it would cause real damage to the world.
Remember that it was only when the world actually saw images of the Nazi concentration camps that the world actually believed it. They'd heard about it for years, but it was largely ignored.
Getting rid of misinformation is great.
That is the goal. The OP article and especially the headline here is misleading.
This is what is in the original letter regarding violent images: „repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games“.
The issue is not violent images per se. The issue is misinformation through violent images that are unrelated to the current events.
and other gruesome images or propaganda that promote terrorist organizations.
Seems to me like this is a sly way to remove any videos where Hamas is successful.
Which is weird, because seeing those videos usually gives more support for Israel.
This whole law is fucked. Leave freedom of speech alone.
I respect that but the images presented to the public were selected to denounce and illustrate horrendous acts commited.
Here, I'd risk there is a very high risk/probability whatever may be leaked/posted is for pure shock value, with no intention to inform or contextualize.
You're speaking against the propaganda fueled groupthink, that's a bannable offense.
You should read before you post.
Or what lol. Rich people are above the law.
I'm glad to see for once the fines are proportional to revenue, and not a fixed amount. 6% hurts.
Sorry, completely off topic and not the place, but ...
your comment is perfectly complemented by your username above it.
He's gonna fuck this up, too.
He won't, we all know he won't. He'd sooner get Twitter banned from Europe than actually try to improve his platform.
The intent is to ruin twitter. That was why he used $22B of Saudi money to buy it.
That is such a win though.
Although the powers that manipulate Elmo won't like it when they can't manipulate the politics in the EU anymore.
A porn actress was made accountable for similar actions in less time and with more impact.
It's almost as if billionaires are untouchable?
Has it been 24 hrs yet?
End of Wednesday in Brussels was ~7h ago. So, yes.
So, what is the followup?
Is this the thing that finally makes Musk feel some pain? You can't wiggle out of this one, EU law is pretty tight on this stuff.
Is this the thing that finally makes Musk feel some pain?
Not if his goal is to run Twitter into the ground. (And I'm about 3 months or so into believing it is.)
Although I can understand that perspective, I honestly think that he's actually just very, very dumb and completely clueless about how money actually works and how businesses function. He's rich enough to never have had to learn any of that and spend his way through failure after failure. I am absolutely certain that he believed that he'd run in there, steer the ship right, and all would be well.
If that is Net Revenue, I have some bad news for the EU. 🤣🤣🤣
I think you're thinking of profits, which is revenue minus costs.
EU fines are a percentage of global revenue, which means all the money you make in any way, anywhere in the world, before subtracting any bullshit.
Which was $4.4 billion in 2022 and is estimated to be roughly $3 billion for 2023, so the maximum fine would be 180-264 million depending on which figure is used.
For comparison, the net loss (not profit) for 2022 for twitter was 270 million.Oh shit, that’s awesome!!
Isn't EU fines turnover, which is revenue plus cost?
The "brilliance" of Elon's plan: he is impervious to EU fines because he doesn't make any money.
He makes a lot ofmoney - he just loses more.
Any phrase, request or threat in the from of "do X or be subject to the rules" is inherently flawed.
Why not skip the asking part and go straight to the enforcing the rules part because they're, you know; the fucking rules.
^ sue em n block em
Purging the images off social media will make it easier to deny that the atrocities ever happened. Keep them there in all their gory uglyness , perhaps put a spoiler tag over them to prevent someone with a feeble constitution from accidentally stumbling onto them and accidentally being triggered , but leave them there as evidence of the evil that happened.
It should be archived and put somewhere people can go and access it for historical and educational purposes, but that's it. It's horrible, and even knowing what's happening is ALREADY bad enough.
There are already people denying it ever happened , this why it is needed.
The better would have been to ban Twitter. People and politics have to understand you can't talk with irrational people.
Nationalize it.
Governments use twitter, a private, for-profit system, far too much for official communications. Governments should run their own communications systems that the public can interface with.
Poop emoji incoming
Freedom of speech must stand. If it's not true, counter it with more speech. Governments shoulder never have the power to block speech nor curate speech.
So what's slander?
Joke’s on Brussels - 6% of a negative number is not a disincentive.
Should be 6% of his personal net worth as most optimistically reported.
Revenue =/= profit
Revenue will never be negative.
I can think of an occasion... when the Beatles tried to open a clothing store which didn't do well, and when it went out of business, fans ended up stealing everything in the building down to the fixtures. Having to pay to renovate the building after the business has closed... that counts as negative revenue to me.
Then take their servers. Just chuck them in the back of a removalist van and pay some mexicans to drive it to your garage.
Umm... why? Why are they censoring the truth?
This is how people don't take war seriously. All they do is hear about it, but don't see the gruesome reality.
Why are they censoring the truth?
Oh, that must be really embarrassing, but...
graphic images and disinformation
Maybe work on your reading comprehension to make sure you don't embarrass yourself like that again.
Traumatizing ≠ making people take war seriously.
Believe it or not, journalism and educating people is much more than uploading graphically disturbing images to some website and leave it as is.
Traumatizing ≠ making people take war seriously.
That's actually not true, and most people who watch these videos aren't 'traumatized', so it's not really an argument.
Believe it or not, journalism and educating people is much more than uploading graphically disturbing images to some website and leave it as is.
Who said it isn't? They should include the footage with their articles. This way people can see instead of just being told.
If they don't want to look, then there should be explicit content warnings.
That's irking to limiting press freedom if gruesome photos and videos are forbidden. That ain't good, EU!
Edit: for all the dumb fucks downvoting me... Where the fuck did I say anything about fake news and propaganda?
Anyone has an idea what turned the American people against the Vietnam war? Exactly. Horrible videos and photos. That's how the world learns about immoral horrors. And Nazi concentrationi camp photos in all the Nazi German newspapers early on would have changed the course of ww2. But there weren't any published photos...
2nd Edit: important context I missed: from https://feddit.nl/comment/3638132
The only images the EU asked to have removed are images from unrelated conflicts and video games portrayed as geniune images of the current events, so blatant disinformation.
It's in the request made by the EU. The Politico article made up the part where all graphic images are to be removed.
Get out of here with your silly US-centric idea of "absolute free speech". Pretty much every civilized country in the world has boundaries to what is considered acceptable.
And even the US does (though they are fewer than elsewhere, granted).
But for some reason the US has produced this myth that absolute freedom of speech (which it doesn't have) somehow is the best possible choice (which it isn't).
I am not American. I am European. Thanks for playing. Try to read what someone actually wrote next time.
The concept of absolute freedom of speech is based on lessons learned in history and even the present. As soon as you start limiting speech you have to draw a line and nobody can agree on where that line should be. The real issue however, is that it's ultimately government that decides.
A government that can limit few speech gets to decide what acceptable speech is and that's a dangerous power in the hands of the wrong people.
There's definitely consequences to unhinderred free speech but I think history shows us that the alternative is worse.
Under the regulations, social media companies are obliged to remove all forms of hate speech, incitement to violence and other gruesome images or propaganda that promote terrorist organizations.
The gruesome images part is only said by Politico. Read the original open letter. The EU is not complaining about the images hurting their sensibilities by being too gruesome, but that they are either from different conflicts or straight up from video games.
The EU is not offended by the gruesomeness of the images, but by the fact that they are lies. Politico is reporting inaccurately at best on this.
The EU isn't saying that violent photos are to be removed. The letter is asking for removal of disinformation and transparency into what gets removed.
Politico seems to have made up the part you're complaining about.
Yes, thanks, by now I've been informed of that. The idea was weird to begin with 👍
Talking about spreading misinformation and media containing violence.
Yeah, clickbait headlines :(
We don't have a 'free press'. We have a 'private press'. We have all the news they want to print. Musk, for example, has suppressed and banned, and blocked all over ex-twitter.
The US isn't the world.
I'm not talking about the US....? 🙄
Limiting (islamo-)fascist propaganda is good. Freedom of speech is a social contract. You only get to keep your freedom of speech if you don't use it to grossly infringe the rights of others.
"Islamo-fascist?" Is this 2002?
Have my upvote