the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, the backlash on social media censoring continues with several European Governments now calling for regulating “the digital oligarchy” and asserting that Big Tech is a threat to democracy.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was critical of Twitter for blocking President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, with her top spokesman calling the move “problematic.” “The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance,” the spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said on Monday at a news conference. Merkel’s intervention highlights a growing unease among European countries about Twitter’s decision on Friday to permanently suspend Trump’s account, with the governments of France and the UK among those questioning the decision.
The French government has echoed Angela Merkel’s sentiment in saying it is “shocked” at Twitter’s banning of President Trump, asserting that Big Tech is a threat to democracy. Junior Minister for European Union Affairs Clement Beaune said the decision to silence Trump proved the need for Big Tech platforms to be tightly regulated. “This should be decided by citizens, not by a CEO,” he told Bloomberg TV on Monday. “There needs to be public regulation of big online platforms.”
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire also said that “the digital oligarchy” was “one of the threats” to democracy and should be reigned in by the state.
Even Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny chastised Twitter at length for permanently banning President Donald Trump. Navalny barely survived an alleged poison attack from Russian agents after spending more than a month in the hospital in August last year. He started a Twitter thread by saying that the censorship imposed on the president is an “unacceptable act.”
Back home the ACLU broke its silence when senior legislative counsel Kate Ruane commented on moves by Big Tech companies to deny access to communication platforms, “It should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions — especially when political realities make those decisions easier. …. It is our hope that these companies will apply their rules transparently to everyone.”
Meanwhile shareholders continue to dump Twitter stock , closing at 47.04 down 1.14 at 2.37% decline.
Love it…
Europeans understand that even if they hate Trump, they must fight for his right to be heard on Twitter, et. al. for the sake of everyone’s freedom.
Sadly, this is not the case in America, where hatred, fear and loathing of Trump has opened the doorway to Fascism and tyranny.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. It has taken some time but Orwell got it right.