The European Commission says it wants to protect free speech but admits it will decide what Google, Facebook, and X censor. Now, the public has discovered that the EU’s top censorship official, Thierry Breton, is a former French defense contractor specializing in mass spying and censorship. He is behind the totalitarian censorship demands.
Thierry Breton led the cybersecurity firm whose subsidiary sold spying and censorship tools.
The Story
The EU Commission offered Elon Musk a secret deal to secretly censor people without telling anyone, and they would be left alone.
X alone did not agree to the deal, and so now the EU is preparing to punish acts with massive fines of up to 6% of its total global revenue.
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“I can’t imagine a more egregious form of foreign interference in our domestic affairs,” reporter Michael Shellenberger wrote. “Foreign governments demanding mass secret censorship for ideological and political reasons. Most terrifying of all is the apparently direct involvement of government intelligence and security agencies, as well as their intermediary organizations, in demanding censorship. “This is all happening at the very same moment that those governments, including our own, are warning of yet another Russian disinformation campaign through spam accounts that hardly anybody ever sees.
“So don’t be fooled by what’s happening here. Governments and former intelligence officials in Europe, Australia, Israel, Brazil, and Ukraine, as well as other nations, are not only demanding censorship, but they’re also often spreading their own disinformation.
“For example, the European Union claims that there was more false information on X than on other platforms, and more censorship would reduce it. Both claims are false.
“Only X has the open source community note system, which allows for real-time corrections to false information.
“A recent study in JAMA, the Journal of American Medicine, found that 97.5 percent of the community notes were entirely accurate, 2% partially accurate, and just .5% inaccurate. It’s not a perfect system, and of course, science is never standing still. So what appears accurate today might not be accurate in the future, but X’s community uses more speech, not censorship, to provide context to controversial content.
“You can still agree or disagree with the original content even with a community note attached. What the EU wants is for its own committees of experts, not community notes, to secretly decide what we can read and say online.
“This is unethical and unconstitutional.
[[File:Hearing of Commissioner-designate Thierry Breton (49068069128).jpg|Hearing_of_Commissioner-designate_Thierry_Breton_(49068069128)]]
“If the EU succeeds in censoring acts, Facebook, Google, and every other major Internet platform, then there is no free speech. There is only government-controlled speech.
“Now many people rightly worry about the implications of a single person, Elon Musk, being all that stands between US and foreign governments’ totalitarian censorship demands.
“I worry about that too. Our speech is inalienable. It’s not something governments give to us or corporations.
“We need to fight back. While we should be grateful to Musk for standing up to the totalitarians in Europe, Brazil, and Australia, we must build a citizen’s movement to fight back…”
Watch:
The totalitarianism we warned of is happening.
The European Union is at this moment forcing big tech companies to secretly engage in mass censorship. Google and Facebook are, apparently, going along with it.
Only Elon Musk’s X, among the major platforms, is resisting.
A few… pic.twitter.com/CO1TFJqXfz
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) July 12, 2024
Who wants this authoritarian telling us what we can say or read?
Take a good look at this man. His intent is to censor the entire Internet, including in the United States. He hates our freedom because it exposes his lies. He treats “1984” as a guidebook. He is a totalitarian menace, and we must do everything we can to remove him from power. https://t.co/fhjB1hhUG8
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) July 12, 2024
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