Hungary Mulls Sanctions Against Social Media Giants (reuters.com) 43
Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga on Monday raised the prospect of sanctioning social media firms over what she called "systematic abuses" of free speech. From a report: The minister said she would meet the Hungarian competition watchdog this week to discuss possible penalties for what she described as unfair commercial practices as well as convening a meeting of the country's digital freedom committee. In a growing wave of criticism, some government officials are complaining about what they have described as efforts by social media companies, including Facebook, to limit conservative views on their platforms. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has turned Hungary's public media into an obedient mouthpiece and allies control large parts of the private media, allowing his agenda to be aired prominently. But the right-wing premier faces the toughest challenge to his decade-long rule at a parliamentary election next year, as he tackles a protracted recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and a united opposition, with polls showing a neck-and-neck race.
Oh, the Irony! (Score:3, Insightful)
In March 2020, the Hungarian President got powers to rule by decree to the extent outlawing the "spreading of misinformation" of COVID.
And now, he wants to protect the #1 missinformant and spreader of lies Trump from being banned?
Re:Oh, the Irony! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well yeah he doesn't want anyone besides himself deciding what information his populace should or should not see.
This whole thing is being just played to the hilt by the right-wing. No one is stopping conservative and right-wing discourse. They're stopping speech that either directly invokes prejudice and/or violence OR which is an egregious lie intended to accomplish the same net effect. So unless the right-wingers are asserting that those two things are essential to their message, there should be no problem at all.
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It's quite ironic to see them do exactly what they accused the Left-Wingers of for such a long time.
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But what you describe there is pretty much what the loudmouths on the Right (not every Republican is a loudmouth) have done for the last 4 years.
They were in power but they didn't believe they were in power. So they pretended that they were being oppressed by the Deep State for example, so it was OK to do others wrong.
That's the big irony, projecting on others all the things that you want to do and are doing yourself.
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Yeah I hope they'll finally require gay weddings to be accommodated in their mega-churches. Oh, and they'll drop the farce about how bakeries have the right to refuse service to gays.
Re:Oh, the Irony! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but that's just not true. I've been repeatedly blocked on Facebook for:
* Using a very common figure of speech in my native language, which FB considered an incitement of violence. Ridiculous. Now I self-censor to avoid this pitfall.
* Describing how I was once assaulted in a racially charged way (despite being a white majority) as a child. I only thruthfully described events as they happened and nothing else. FB blocked me for "hate speech".
A friend of mine was blocked for posting a photo of her daughter with a caption "I'm really proud of my blue-eyed blond girl". According to Facebook, this constitutes hate speech. I couldn't believe it until I saw Facebook's decision with my own eyes. You can't make this stuff up.
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Hungary (and Poland as we saw who were on a similar post recently) has an extreme right wing nutjobs in power, pretty much like Trump (without the crazy hair and much more calculated), and he wants to do exactly that, spread all the misinformation have full control of the media.
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These right-wing leaders are on the same page as Angela Merkel and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Maybe this isn't as factional an issue as you imply it is.
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What is your argument? That because two right-wing leaders criticize the actions by social media giants, we should ignore similar criticisms by left-wing leaders, and pretend that the criticism is exclusively from the right wing? It seems clear that at least Merkel and Lopez Obrador are defending free speech protections for people they disagree with.
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The real argument is the PR=B$ (public relations corporations who actively lie for profit) fighting to protect the evil and corrupt corporations that is Google and it's fellow co-conspirators seeking total dominance and control over the entire population out psychopathic greed and ego and governments who want to control their own social media platforms and KILL, KILL, KILL global social media platforms because they can not control them.
The advertising corporations pretending to be social media platforms ar
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For what I know from my Polish friends the ruling party in Poland does not control all media, as private media are not controlled, but they control the narrative in public radio and TV. Though the way things are going it is not certain if they will not start controlling private media as well.
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More often than not it appears to be defined as "stuff I don't agree with".
Hilarious - Hungary verbatim copying from Russia. (Score:2)
What's next? Cats sleeping with dogs? Actually, that one is already happening
On a more serious note, it is high time our press sat down and went through the 5 or so laws dealing with Internet and protests voted in the last 3 weeks of December and pub
Re:All the little autocrats on it (Score:5, Insightful)
Hungary, Poland etc want to control their citizens and their borders themselves, they don't want to let companies have that power as well.
And why should they? Even in decent countries with a very high level of freedom of speech, a good case could be made for this law, to prevent companies from censoring the stuff that the government allows.
I've no idea if conservative speech is being censored by social media in Hungary, but if it is, and liberal politicians are free to enjoy the use of highly effective channels with which to reach their constituents, while conservative politicians are denied those options, then that very much is a matter of freedom of speech. It would be a serious political isssue that goes well beyond "freedom of speech doesn't mean someone has to build you a platform" or "companies are free to set their own house rules". It means that those companies can manipulate the social and political discourse in your country to an extreme degree. Making a law against that doesn't necessarily mean that a government wants to manipulate public opinion themselves.
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Is what they say allowed in Hungary? If so.. Their country their laws.
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Is what they say allowed in Hungary? If so.. Their country their laws.
As part of the European Union they agreed to abide by EU laws and regulations on free-speech and human-right. They have been threatened, sent to court and even sanction a number of times for breaking them.
You're allowed conservative views (Score:1)
Just fuck off if you think that also includes allowing your authoritarian fascism.
WDYM "right wing"? (Score:1)
EU (Score:2)
That said, the last EU relief fund was subordinated to "respect of the rule of law" which excluded Hungary and Poland. On account of the authoritarian nature of the power there. So they cannot always take the money of the EU without the rules of the EU. We are taking not very rich countries for which EU subsidies are important.
I don't know if the EU can do anything about that law directly but they notice and will probably not sit idle.
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Context (Score:3, Informative)
The Hungarian prime minister's puppets brought up 90% of the media using stolen taxpayer money, including all regional newspapers and the two largest internet news site and all television channels except one neutral. They converted the state media into propaganda centers, they fund it with a hella amount of taxpayer money. This state media doesn't allow any opposition politician to enter their buildings. The state propaganda lose each and every lawsuit about their lies, but it does not make any difference, they pay the fine from taxpayer money.
Because they do not have the money to outright buy Facebook and Twitter, they would like to use law and advertisement money to convert it to a propaganda channel as well.
I do not like Facebook moderation's policy, although I do not know how could they be better, but I am sure that whatever the Hungarian government proposes is seriously dangerous to democracy and freedom of speech.
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Re:Context - at least spell it well, please (Score:1)
Only 20% of the population lives at Budapest, so the country cannot be called as a city-state.
Otherwise about the prime minister, Mr. Orban's puppets: unfortunately it is all true.
He and his ruling party
- captured the state with mafia methods,
- syphons out taxpayer's money to well-behaving friendly firms and to family members,
- oppresses any counter-opinions,
- constantly rewrites the election rules to
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