Do you think an European Citizens’ Initiative to ban Twitter in the EU would be beneficial and have a possibility of being successful?
I’m sorry if this is not a good community for this question. If not please point me to one.
Twitter isnt a social media plattform anymore. Its like truth social a plattform for propaganda. And as we do boycott, bann and so on russian and chinese propaganda, we should ban us propaganda too. I think ith that easy. (:
The main issue with Twitter is that we will never be able to prove that the algorithms are not manipulating users by shaping a certain narrative. Combine this with the unsettling events of recent months and I feel like we have no other choice than banning this platform in the free world.
Yes, Let’s censor the news we disagree with!
This is not about disagreement but the total lack of transparency and control over potentially hostile and destructive narratives. Right now, what Elon pushes on twitter is borderline hate speech, corruption and fake news. And hate speech is illegal in many countries. It‘s exactly the same situation as with TikTok and USA, who are still likely to ban TikTok. Also, I don’t think Twitter should be banned on the internet level like what China is doing. But as a European I should be able to disable all algorithms and other content manipulation methods when using the service.
I worry that these actions of banning platforms with ultimately break global awareness. We still have things like bluesky but Twitter was the platform for awhile. As the US slowly alienates and isolates itself from the rest if the world well find ourself ultimately less informed. Granted, Twitter is now a cesspool but generally I don’t like seeing our information channels close.
I’m an American so maybe the rest of you won’t agree with me, but I think the idea is great. We should also ban it here in the US, in Australia, and Mexico, and Canada and, really, the whole world.
Not a fan of banning sites. This establishes infrastructure, which a future fascist regime could use for their purposes. Better to strengthen local alternatives and let it happen by itself.
what about restricting use by governments?
people should make choices, governments should be sovereign in as many ways as possible imo… twitter has proven that it’s not an unbiased utility
or perhaps the “primary source of truth” must be elsewhere and may be shared to twitter, but governments must do whatever they can to ensure that citizens primary method of interaction is through sovereign sources - which may mean limited posting to twitter/meta etc, or it may mean marketing
I don’t like the idea of banning social media, newspapers, books, or news websites. Even if they go downhill like twitter. Just opting out and ignoring them, will do. If many do it, it will collapse by itself. But there must be a good alternative and that is difficult.
Not a fully formed opinion yet; but since X is ran in a way that encourages populism, misinformation and extremism, yeah. Maybe it could make it harder for extremists to connect and recruit new people. But if that is the goal, banning X is not enough. Platforms like Telegram are also popular for harboring extremists. So it would probably need a widespread effort across public platforms to be regulated and better moderated.
the difference is that telegram is a chat application rather than a public space. i’ve been on telegram for 10 years at this point and i’ve never gotten so much as an invite from people i don’t know. the owner is iffy so my friend group is trying to migrate away but none of us have ever seen the things telegram is famous for. i’m not even sure i know how to get shit like that to show up. on twitter it’s in your face as soon on you log in.
You make a good point. I also used Telegram some years ago and never gotten invites to questionable channels, although I think you can search for channels in the app. But another way to learn about them is through influencers advertising them on social media like Twitter, facebook, insta etc. which brings us full circle xD
on twitter it’s in your face
I wrote a lengthy paragraph and realized that I don’t know how bad it is, and how to act accordingly. I agree with another person saying, that they are against bans on media. Maybe the EU could offer a compromise: Abide by some fancy schmancy laws that address content moderation or get lost. But then again, I do not trust politicians in the EU parliament to a) understand the technology and it’s limitations b) be interested in this, since there are many conservatives who could actually benefit from twitter being in the state it’s in.
I’d be in favour of this. I think we’ve seen how fickle the masses are. They need to be shielded from the fake, toxic shit that is social media
This was the moment where banning twitter turned from a good idea into a non negotiable measure we need to take asap.
If the ban brings a new alternative in place, then yes. I’m not from the EU or the USA, but I’m used to Mastodon and Lemmy. I don’t mind non-american alternatives. The EU should have its own competitive social media for the rest of the world.
Bluesky?
Unfortunately, as I understand it, Bluesky has an identical algorithm with Twitter. Ive lost patience with how American-led technology has taken the world’s attention for granted. What I had when I was on Bluesky was reading the same information being viraled and repeated, and the same prominent users from Twitter absorbing almost all of my attention. Bluesky promoting the same users since 2010 made the world smaller for me and I’d rather be on Mastodon where smaller creators are somewhat boosted. Moreover, spaces on Lemmy are teaching me a lot about the European Union, and since I’m an outsider and I don’t live in the west, I deeply enjoy being educated rather than sensationalized with the same conspiracy theory. I firmly believe there’s a larger world than what an American-led algorithm often portrays. But, I acknowledge that everyone is different and I understand that they might still have preferences that are different to mine. Nonetheless, I still want an algorithm that actually shows me niche topics all around the world.
The cool thing on bluesky is that you can create your own algorithms through custom feeds. Also to my knowledge the following feed is purely chronological.
It’s surely not as decentralized and free as Mastodon but it’s heck of a lot better than the centralized platforms.
Is there something against an approach where we only store data, like we did for the last centuries. But how the data is aggregated and presented is not defined. There could be various frontends using different (public) algorithms. This could work pretty easy with decentralised networks like the fediverse.
Isn’t that exactly the way Bluesky/ATprotocol works? You can store your account/data wherever your want (PDS) and the Relays/Firehorses are responsible to aggregate posts.
I also like ActivityPub more but Bluesky is definitely easier to use.
I think I’ll check it out again at some point.
this has been done in a few countries but running a government mastodon instance and giving departments and official accounts profiles… i kinda love that, but wish mastodon supported domains like bsky does
id love to have like education@gov.au, treasury@gov.au, etc but afaik the way mastodon works is you need to devote an entire domain to it, so they’d have to be like treasury@social.gov.au, which is kinda verbose :(
True. That’s unfortunate, i feel that.
We should ban it for politicians. Why on earth would you use a for-profit foreign platform for official communication?
I wrote to my MP asking them to stop using it and to help to get other MPs off the platform. Everyone should write to their representativea in government asking them to do the same.
I think companies etc should be banned from sharing news and updates there. Eg. A lot of public transport news is shared there, sometimes exclusively. It would be ideal if people could get access but nothing official or important was facilitated. Imagine if we were having to access truth social to find out if public transport was cancelled due to a snowstorm - well, now xitter is truth social.
Do it!
Depends what “ban” means. If it refers to them not being able to be commercially active in the EU because they violate EU regulations, sure. So no selling ads, no targeting ads, no selling blue check-marks.
If it refers to preventing people from the EU to access their website through meddling with DNS or similar means, then i am against it. We should be able to access it, but they shouldnt be able to make money off it in the EU.
I do agree.
Some people might need access to those sites for various reasons (journalists making research, keeping in contact with friends overseas, etc.). But we ought to inform the european population about the dangers of using those services, and preferably move politics and country-specific communication (your local police station social media account) onto european solutions.
Cutting off or limiting the profits which american megacorps can make off the european population does also sound like a good idea.
X does not and will not comply with EU rules, and thus needs to be banned until they change (i.e. indefinitely).
I am also fine with escalating fines until the problems are addressed. Say, start with 1000$ and double that every week until they comply, either they do or there’ll be a lot of money.
