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EU Urges Internet Companies To Do More To Remove Extremist Content (reuters.com) 79

Internet groups such as Facebook, Google's YouTube and Twitter need to do more to stem the proliferation of extremist content on their platforms, the European Commission said after a meeting on Wednesday. From a report: Social media companies have significantly boosted their resources to take down violent and extremist content as soon as possible in response to growing political pressure from European governments, particularly those hit by militant attacks in recent years. But Julian King, EU security commissioner, said that while a lot of progress had been made, additional efforts were needed. "We are not there yet. We are two years down the road of this journey: to reach our final destination we now need to speed up our work," King said in his closing speech at the third meeting of the EU Internet Forum, which brings together the Commission, EU member states, law enforcement and technology companies. The EU has said it will come forward with legislation next year if it is not satisfied with progress made by tech companies in removing extremist content, while a German online hate speech law comes into effect on Jan. 1.
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EU Urges Internet Companies To Do More To Remove Extremist Content

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  • Extremist Content (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Censoring people on a whim is an extreme stance.

    We should urge internet companies to do more to remove the EU from trying to do anything.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      a German online hate speech law comes into effect on Jan. 1.

      And heres a preview of what you can expect from this so-called "hate speech" law:

      A German politician has been sued [voiceofeurope.com] for "racial incitement".

      What did he do? At a city council meeting, he read, out loud, 30 newspaper headlines from different newspapers, on crimes by Muslims and migrants.

      • So basically the hate speech law takes away responsibility from citizens, and places yhe actions of citizens entirely the shoulders of content creators.
      • And heres a preview of what you can expect from this so-called "hate speech" law:

        A German politician has been sued [voiceofeurope.com] for "racial incitement".

        What did he do? At a city council meeting, he read, out loud, 30 newspaper headlines from different newspapers, on crimes by Muslims and migrants.

        Let me add a bit of context... first of all: anyone can sue anybody for anything. In that information is very little said if anyone actually did something or if it was forbidden to begin with.

        Then, the two politicians involved were of AfD and Die Linke parties which, oversimplified, is as close to nazi and communist party as you can get while still staying within the constitution. So neither the one guys provocations nor the other guys shouts for censorship were not on par what you would expect from them.

        An

    • by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @07:18PM (#55691797)

      Censoring people on a whim is an extreme stance.

      Yes, and IMO the EU is taking a nosedive right down the mass censorship hole. Deleting extremist content when its found is just a game of whack-a-mole that will never be won. Just ask the MPAA/RIAA how easy it is to do even when they have entire government agencies dedicated to their cause. But it's not just extremist content that is problematic, rather it's fake news and other bunk that become mainstream (name any anti-science movement of your choice: anti-vaccination, anti-gmo, etc.)

      The problem is echo chambers, plain and simple, but unfortunately there probably will never be an easy fix. The best that we could hope for, IMO, is for social media to change how it builds connections to people (facebook friends lists come to mind.)

    • by Hal_Porter ( 817932 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @10:58PM (#55692899)

      Censorship, nominally aimed at protecting people from a problem, always ends up being used to shut down discussion of the problem.

  • Expect the EU panzer blitzkrieg by the morning.

  • by execthis ( 537150 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @07:26PM (#55691831)

    What is extremist? Another shit word that is deliberately indeterminate.

    Not wanting your country - your homeland - invaded by third-world savages is not extremist: It's extremely natural and healthy.

    • particularly against a particular group. In the US we have a thing called "Dog Whistling" where you say racist and violent things in an off handed manor. A senatorial candidate here (Roy Moore) just told his constituents all jews were going to hell but said it like so:

      "No matter how much money he’s got, he's still going to the same place that people who don't recognize God and morality and accept his salvation are going"

      To the casual listener it sounds like he said Soros was going to hell, but i
      • by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @09:59PM (#55692673) Homepage

        You regulate facts and you protect opinion and that is the way it works. What the EU is up too is clutching at straws because of the mess they have made in allowing mass immigration of cultures that most emphatically do not want to assimilate, they want to dominate, to control, they come from autocratic cultures, where they strong are fully entitled to dominate and control the weak. So now they have a real problem because those autocrat culture types are waking up the independent types and a real culture clash is forming or has formed and is now getting worse. Any kind of false flag trigger could set of the migrants to start willy nilly killing existing citizens in large numbers, a huge problem and one that will hang over their heads, until those who have no desire to assimilate are removed.

        Look at Sweden, it really demonstrates the reality of the problem of denial. They pretended to welcome in people in the past but they where never really welcomed, never really integrated, sort of just dumped in a region and politicians would turn up every now and again to provide lip service and no action. Any comment about this was systematically attacked and quite ruthlessly by the government, who felt if you just kept it silenced, kept it tamped down, it would just simple evaporate away. In reality it just festered and got worse and worse and in the most spectacularly blindly stupid fashion, after believing their own bullshit, they decide to pour massive amounts of fuel onto the existing fire. Swedes like to pretend they accept and integrate migrants but it ain't true, they are rejected and isolated within the country and having more makes it much worse, but the Swedes like the PR and got trapped in it, they are right fucked now. The Germans in the most stupid fashion then attempted to out do this stupidity and have now created a problem for the entire EU. I am not a racist but make no mistake I am a culturalist and have no shame in being so, fuck shitty cultures, isolate and kept them at a distance, a well protected distance, fuck wasting time, capital and our citizens lives on trying and failing to change their cultures and the only reason it happens in reality is so that multi-national corporations can steal resources from those ugly cultures.

      • by mpercy ( 1085347 )

        Isn't this post a dog-whistle calling for the extermination of Evangelicals?

        You also disparaged 60M American who voted for Trump.

        And you tied both Evangelicals and Trump voters to Nazis by juxtaposition.

        This post will have to be censored.

      • It's funny because you're calling Judge Moore's statement dog whistling is itself a straw dog attack. You accuse him of making a loaded statement, something which cannot ever really be refuted, so you have the perfect attack against him. I think that's how mainstream media also plays it's constant mind games on people by claiming that something is *really* something else. Attacks like that are based on belief and cannot be refuted because at that point relying upon the actual meaning of words themselves

    • What is extremist? Another shit word that is deliberately indeterminate.

      The whole "you can't define everything perfectly so therefore you can't define anything ever" is exactly the sort of bullshit snowflakery I'm sure you'd ocmplain bitterly about from people who have lots of things to say about pronouns.

    • by eepok ( 545733 )
      It's funny. The first part of your post is absolutely 100% rational. The vague use of a word that is re-definable per context for the purpose of restricting a fundamental human right (free speech) is too much and too far. I like the Supreme Court standard for restricting a fundamental right.:

      - The restriction must be justified by a compelling/necessary/crucial governmental interest
      == The compelling government interest would be to prevent the spread of prejudice and scapegoating akin to 1930s Germany.
      • I see it the other way around. You are dangerously - catastrophically - semi rational. Caring about some free speech right but then not wanting to protect your homeland - something which leads to deprivation, injury, and even death of citizens - not to mention other things like environmental damage - is pathological. You are exemplifying perfectly that pathology that is afflicting the West, causing it to injure itself. No doubt you live an insularized life free from having to experience the consequences

  • by Anonymous Coward
    For all its faults, the United States definitely got the unapologetic legal protection of speech mostly correct. Obscenity laws are not Constitutional and need to go, but that's a minor ding. Any country that does not have near-absolutist free speech protections enshrined in the law of the land is slowly shitting on its own citizens. Fuck the EU.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      In practice the USA has plenty of restrictions on free speech: "intellectual property" laws, "classified" materials laws - not to mention nudity and explicit language.

      • USA: the least free nation, except for all the rest!

        • USA: the least free nation, except for all the rest!

          The USA: why the freest nation earth has more people in prison than any other nation.

          So free.

          • Yeah, it sure is a shame that more crackheads and gangsters aren't free to roam the streets :(

            • Yeah, it sure is a shame that more crackheads and gangsters aren't free to roam the streets :(

              Always an excuse!

              Somehow other first world countries manage just fine without locking up half the population.

              You ain't free if you're in gaol!

      • IP laws are pretty clearly delineated in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution as a method of protecting against theft. Classified material is only illegal to leak out. Once it's out, you can't be prosecuted for repeating it. The absolutism really is an absolutism if phrased as, "You think it, you can say it unless you stole the words from someone else or are using them to direct physical violence."
  • Remember how well that spying and reporting worked out for all the Communist parties in 1980's Eastern Europe?

    Why is the EU and NATO doing everything it can to become the Stasi and Warsaw Pact?
    Why the need for SJW EU wide to use censorship on people reporting on the news in their EU communities?

    Big corporations and big EU government working together to ban people talking about wanting to exit the EU?
    From talking about the results of mass illegal immigration into the EU?

    So now the EU is going to sp
    • by Jzanu ( 668651 )
      Go back under your rock, you damn ISIS advocates are disgusting!
      • Go back under your rock, you damn ISIS advocates are disgusting!

        Never understood appeal of ISIS over OSPF. Personally I would rather RIP than join the ranks of ISIS lusers.

  • A neverending task (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @08:08PM (#55692059)

    This is due to the definition of " extremist content " changing depending on who is currently in charge and where in the world you may reside.

    An ever shifting target is nigh impossible to hit.

    • An ever shifting target is nigh impossible to hit.

      But in this context, the political/ideological "collateral damage" is actually the primary goal.

      Strat

  • Technically, I disagree with statements such as Dimitris Avramopoulos: "It is feasible to reduce the time it takes to remove content to a few hours".

    Socially, I disagree with this proposal because it is suppression of free speech.

    But. I understand. Our society deserves better than paid griefers spewing propaganda to the lambs our human race. Paid propaganda means our least fortunate suffer. To advance, we need to ensure their protection. An informed democratic process where the benefit of society is val

  • ...because it's so much easier to expect others to clean up your shit, instead of facing the fact that it's your policies, your choices, your behavior as governments that are creating the conditions in which such people thrive and multiply.

    • by Jzanu ( 668651 )
      Refugees are humans, with the same rights as all have. For a potential host nation, welcoming the refugees is the only process that results in their being integrated into and expanding the economy of the host nation. Camps by themselves with no outflow and no way out become cesspools inculcating the things that actually cause people to adopt terrorism as an approach to resolving their actual problems. Rather, vocational training and active camp security are required to combat that and funnel people into pro
  • We need to give hate groups, no matter what end of the political spectrum they spawn from, all the access we can. Free advertising, daily interviews, the whole works. make sure every one hears it. Until they lose their air of mystery and defiance. Until every one sees them for what they are. Groups of bitter, scared power hungry monsters. Of course, stopping hate speech is never the aim of these laws. Not in the US, not in Europe. Control is.
    • by Jzanu ( 668651 )
      No, they should all be treated as terrorist groups - their assets should be seized, bank accounts frozen, all revenue streams negated. Limited to their personal ability, they can act within the confines of the law. If crazy people rant on a corner then someone can directly remind them of their insanity, and if they obstruct the public then they will be removed by police.
  • To do more to remove extremists...

    Seriously. How many rape gangs, terror attacks, and all other manner of barbarity do people have to suffer through before these people who're incapable of living, civilly, in a first world nation are ejected (preferably from a helicopter)?

    • Seriously. How many rape gangs, terror attacks, and all other manner of barbarity do people have to suffer through before these people who're incapable of living, civilly, in a first world nation are ejected (preferably from a helicopter)?

      "these people"?

      So, some people in the EU have done something you don't like so you reckon the EU should murder all of them?

      You do know some of the EU countries tried that before, right?

      • by Chas ( 5144 )

        Did I say "all of them"?

        No.

        I carefully delineated serial rapists, terrorism perpetrators, etc.

        It's YOU who made the jump to "all of them".

  • Just read this from the King site: https://ec.europa.eu/commissio... [europa.eu] i dont get where reuters get that hate speech law thing.. propaganda, thats for sure.

Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

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