EU stops advertising on X over hate speech. Fines could follow next year::The European Union is pulling its advertisements from Elon Musk’s X for now, citing an “alarming increase” in hate speech and disinformation on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

  • seananigans@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This comment will make me sound like an idiot, but I’m just coming to believe that all of Musk’s decisions with X were targeted to this very outcome. To be the world’s centre of alt right propaganda. It just makes too much sense now.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      He’s not that smart. He got stuck having to buy Twitter after his pump and dump backfired. His solution to having to buy Twitter was to cut costs by firing staff and use his celebrity to manufacturer engagement with troll posts.

      The problem he missed was that staff was necessary to keep hate speech under control and his trolling meant to drive engagement would backfire from advertisers and regulators.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t say idiot, just very naive when it comes to your assessment of Musk’s ability to think ahead. He’s basically a South African Alex Jones who started out rich(er) 🤷

    • r3df0x ✡️✝☪️@7.62x54r.ru
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      1 year ago

      There has been an increase in blatant racism and prejudice. I don’t know if those users eventually get banned. If the right takes any action against blatant hate speech, shitheads like Tim Pool will start crying and denounce the platform as not allowing free speech. If they allow “free speech,” then the shitheads eventually drive all the normal people off the platform. The only good thing is that Twitter already has a left wing population, so as long as they can maintain that, it should avoid turning to shit. It was also a mainstream platform so hopefully that should maintain the normie population.

      Sites like Lemmy instances are better at allowing a wider range of “free speech” because as long as the instance population is large enough to keep the shitheads a minority, they can stick to their own subs and generally keep the bullshit quarantined.

    • camr_on@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think it’s not impossible that the goal was simply to discredit Twitter entirely

    • Zoboomafoo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You’d be right. 10 days before he bought it, Musk got linked a plan to buy twitter and turn it into right-wing American WeChat.

      I heard about it on Rachel Maddow’s October 2 show (has it really been 2 months since then?)

    • thejml@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Not sure why you’d assume you sound like an idiot. You’re just coming to a hypothesis based on all available information. It seems like a sane train of reasoning based on all the empirical evidence we’ve seen thus far.

      It’s likely that he didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did, or that he hoped there’s a bigger appetite or marketplace for X in this capacity. It’s also possible he didn’t think it all through as was made more likely by the way he was trying to come up with reasons to get out of the deal.

    • Bremmy@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      He’s just a stupid narcissist that came into money. They don’t think that far ahead, and it makes him look bad so he wouldn’t want this outcome

  • DieguiTux8623@feddit.it
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    1 year ago

    Misinformation has already spread in the continent. This will be downvoted but “too little, too late” is the only thing that comes to my mind reading that piece of news.

  • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I feel like the EU is one of the few forces of good in the world these days.

    • thriveth@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It is not. But it has been doing some right things when it comes to privacy protection and so on.

      Still, Trump’s border wall and caged children are merely cute compared to the shit going on at the borders of the EU.

    • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Until you find out it lets Muslim immigrants (80% of whom prefer sharia law over eu law) take over entire towns & countries.

        • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          It got me banned from reddit, but I ain’t even half right nor even a bit extremist. I just walked around in Rotterdam, Almere, Marseille, Barcelona and such. Have you?

          • thriveth@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I have. I have even lived in and right next to the widely decried “no-go zones” of Sweden, and can testify that the whole thing is a pile of racist bullshit.

            • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Don’t do that. I did NOT say those words. You ARE CHANGING WHAT I SAID. fu

              • SasquatchBanana@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Words have implications, and you are implying these immigrants want sharia law to be impemented. Do you have examples of this? Why did you mention these cities? What’s special about them?

        • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          Most of Middle East and North Africa from 7th century on. Most of the area of current Spain and Portugal was under Islam rule for 5 centuries.

          Currently? Sweden’s Malmö is probably the closest example of a slowly happening “takeover”.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_European_Union_by_Muslim_population

          Is this a problem? That I don’t claim to definitely know, but it doesn’t feel like a great direction for a secular atheist such as myself.

            • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              Yes, it’s possible that it’s a similar hyperbole and nothing to worry about ultimately.

              The reasons why jews were hated/distrusted in history seem to be different from the reasons why muslims are.

        • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Which port town? Rotterdam, Marseille, Barcelona, etc

          Because countries arnt yet at that level.

          30-40% of babies born are non European decent.

          I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing. But ANYONE THAT PREFERS SHARIA LAW OVER EUROPEAN (OR RESPECTIVE COUNTRY’S) LAW, should NOT be in Europe.

            • DahGangalang@infosec.pub
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              1 year ago

              I don’t want to get in the middle of a flame war, but as someone who’s seen the culture of his small town shift over the last couple decades, I can’t help but have some sympathy for those who worry about this happening in their local (Admittedly, in my case, it’s watching a town where the suburban drops off to rural slowly be subsumed by city sprawl, so this might be a false equivalance).

              But I think the real issue is that that’s not an evenly distributed 11%. People will naturally bunch up in groups along cultural lines. I could see a city developing a single Arab/Muslim neighborhood over the course of a decade being of no note, but it sounds like some are developing multiple over just a couple years.

              I have no real data to back that notion up, but from what I hear from Europeans, that’s the general feel. I think that’s the real issue: things are changing and they feel like they’re changing fast, and that’s freaking people out. Telling people who feel that way they’re crazy only “others” them and I feel that’s really how the situation gets worse.

              But also, the towns the guy above mentioned feel like bigger cities (I’m American and haven’t been to Europe, so I also might lack perspective), and so I do feel like they’re overstating the point.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I have no real data to back that notion up, but from what I hear from Europeans, that’s the general feel.

                Yeah, and Americans in general once felt that the Irish or the Italians would take over the country because they were emigrating in large numbers. Guess what never happened?

                • DahGangalang@infosec.pub
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                  1 year ago

                  I suppose, the point I mean to make is that belittling this guy does nothing to solve the problem.

                • Evil_incarnate@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  There is a big difference though. Their beliefs were compatible with Americans, everyone believed in Jesus, not killing people and such. And most importantly, the next generation mingled and married locals and they were almost fully assimilated by the third generation.

                  Where I live, and other places, most of the Muslim population (not all, mind you) keep their children from others as much as possible. The children are taught what they can and can’t do because they are Muslim. And they can only marry Muslims (conversions are allowed but the family must live Muslim lives under those rules. They are not allowing natural assimilation. Places like Denmark have laws forcing immigrant children to attend day care with locals, because otherwise they won’t.

            • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Sorry, this is true if you include countries like Poland and Hungary.

              IT ISN’T TRUE IF YOU LOOK AT PORT CITIES. and small towns can be overrun within a week

              Ps MY BEST FRIENDS ARE (PROGRESSIVE) MUSLIMS. nothing against them! But adding even more immigrants that aren’t educated nor socially connected to ANY European thing isn’t good… They aren’t like the Mexicans…

          • thriveth@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Thinking that any political opinions are fundamentally “Non-European” is a fundamentally totalitarian and racist mindset. I reject your attempts at gatekeeping my politics based on your arbitrary and chauvinistic ideas of “European” values. But hey, there is nothing more inherently European than racism, so I guess you’re living up to your own ideals there.

            • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I specifically mentioned EUROPEAN LAW vs SHARIA LAW and the fact that 80% of European Muslims prefer the latter.

              THAT’S A FACTUAL STATEMENT FROM A LARGE PUBLIC INQ.

      • thriveth@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Can you mention some of all of these alleged “Sharia controlled” towns and, eh, countries?

        • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          That is not at all what I said. I said the mayority of Muslims in Europe prefer sharia law. You are CHANGING my words. That sick fundy behavior.

          • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Your unchanged words:

            Until you find out it [the EU] lets Muslim immigrants (80% of whom prefer sharia law over eu law) take over entire towns & countries.

            Provide examples then. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and the burden of providing such evidence is on the claimant and no one else.

            And surely if you have a numeric figure like 80% for the proportion of Muslim immigrants in the EU who supposedly prefer sharia law, you can cite the source in which the statistic came from, and the source will list their data collection and analysis methodology which will also surely be logically and mathematically sound, right? Riiiiight?

          • zoomshoes@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago

            Can we get an example of a town that’s been “taken over” in this manner? Your words.

            • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I mentioned a whole bunch, try going to non tourist areas of Marseille, Rotterdam, paris, Etc after 7pm.

      • arc@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Twitter is filled with idiots who’ll pronounce London/Paris/wherever is under Sharia law. Never seems to occur to them that this is very easy to fact check.

        • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I definitely did not say that they were under sharia law. I made several factual statements. But ALL of you manage to Twist my words. Sick rethoric!

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    In October, a few days after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel, the European Commission asked X to provide details of the actions it was taking to combat the spread of “illegal content and disinformation” on its platform.

    A tidal wave of antisemitism, Islamophobia and misinformation has engulfed social media platforms in recent weeks since the unprecedented October 7 attack by Hamas, followed by air strikes and a ground offensive by Israel against the Hamas-controlled enclave of Gaza.

    “It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to CNN.

    Germany’s Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency, which promotes equal treatment at work and in everyday life, announced on October 11 that it would stop using X entirely, citing an “enormous increase” in discriminatory and hateful speech on the platform.

    “Ministries and state bodies should ask themselves whether it is still acceptable to remain on a platform that has become a disinformation network and whose owner spreads antisemitic, racist and populist content,” Ferda Ataman, Germany’s independent federal commissioner for anti-discrimination, said in a statement.

    Sandra Wachter, a professor of technology and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, said they are required by the DSA to treat their boss like any other user by, for example, taking down his posts or flagging them as problematic if they break EU rules.


    The original article contains 940 words, the summary contains 255 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • arc@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Elon was mulling pulling out of the EU and I really want this dumbass to follow through on that threat.

  • SirStumps@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I mean all social media has hate speech of one kind of another and it’s almost all misinformation or part truths. Really depends on the agenda.

  • Wrench@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I get, and approve of, ending your sponsorship via ads. But I don’t think legal recourse should be rewarded.

    Any business transaction has risk. If you decide to advertise on Superbowl, you’re putting your chips on NFL.

    If you’re advertising on Twitter, after the Musk purchase, your money is on Musk and Twitters staff to continue the value. If Musk says stupid shit that devalues your investment… well, that’s on you for putting your money on it, and not exercising your exit clause a year ago.

    • Tosti@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      The fines would be for non compliance with the law not for not being able to advertise. Or did I read your comment wrong?

      • Kayn@dormi.zone
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        1 year ago

        I think the person you replied to assumed that the legal action was related to the pulling of ads, when they’re actually two independent incidents.

    • ThenThreeMore@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      It’s two separate things, from the article:

      A more drastic move could come next year. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, could impose a fine of more than $100 million on X if the company is found to have breached tough new EU rules aimed at cleaning up digital media.