Tag Archives: free speech

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Elon Musk buying Twitter

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The social network Twitter was opened to the public almost 16 years ago, on July 15, 2006. It allows users to post and read posts posted by other users, known as tweets.
US billionaire Elon Musk has agreed to buy the Internet company Twitter for $ 44 billion. The company announced it 25th April 2022. Musk will gain control of the influential social network used by millions of people around the world. Following the completion of the transaction, Twitter shares will be withdrawn from the exchange they entered in 2013.

Already in early April, Musk announced that he had bought a 9 percent stake in Twitter. In mid-April, he came up with an offer to take over the entire company. The company said today (25th April) that its board of directors unanimously approved the transaction.

Now the agreement has yet to be approved by shareholders and regulator.
According to Musk, it is necessary for Twitter to be transferred to private ownership in order for it to develop and become a real platform for free expression.

"Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and twitter is a digital square where fundamental issues for the future of humanity are discussed," Musk said in a press release to Twitter today. "Twitter has huge potential. I look forward to working with this company and the user community to leverage it," he added.

The future of Twitter is uncertain,  boss Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal told employees after announcing the deal. 
The takeover is expected to be completed within a few months, with Musk indicating for a long time that he wants to fundamentally change the way the social network works with tens of millions of users around the world.
However, the details of his plans, which apparently concern the moderation of the content and transparency of the platform, are not clear, which is also reflected in Agrawal's words. "Once the agreement is reached, we do not know which direction the platform will go," he told Reuters.
According to Musk, it is necessary for Twitter to be transferred to private ownership in order for it to develop and become a real platform for free expression.

Comments from web:

And it has recently been written that shareholders will try to dilute Musk's share and somehow prevent a "hostile" takeover. Suddenly he buys Twitter. The turnaround is really interesting.

….
As the rich man begins to buy the media, his entry into politics approaches.

                           Thanks for reading

                                                                Margaret

 

General

New rules for internet in Europe

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New rules for internet in Europe

Countries and EU members have agreed on new rules for internet content. Negotiators from the European Parliament and EU member states have agreed on new rules under which technology giants must more closely monitor the content on their platforms and pay fees to regulators monitoring their compliance. Thus, hate speech and other illegal content on the internet should be removed more quickly in the future.

The agreement has yet to be confirmed by the European Parliament and EU states, but this is considered a formality, wrote the agency DPA.

The digital services act (DSA) is the second point of the strategy of the European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, which aims to limit the power of the technology giants. The agreement was concluded after more than 16 hours of negotiations.

"We have a DSA agreement: the Digital Services Act will ensure that what is illegal offline is also perceived and addressed as illegal online – not as a slogan, as a reality," Vestager wrote on Twitter.

According to the DSA, companies face fines of up to six percent of their global turnover for violating the rules. In the event of repeated infringements, they could be prohibited from doing business in the EU.

The aim of the DSA is, among other things, to ensure that illegal content such as hate speech is removed more quickly from the network, that harmful disinformation and war propaganda are shared less, and that counterfeit products are sold less on internet marketplaces.

DSA is part of a large digital package proposed by the European Commission in December 2020. The second part is the digital markets act (DMA), for which the agreement was concluded at the end of March. The DMA aims above all to limit the market power of technology giants such as Google and Facebook with stricter rules.

One of the points at issue was, for example, the legislation under which the illegality in question would be assessed.

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Many internet users comment on this as oppression of freedom of speech. "Still no one really knows what it is hateful content and what it is misinformation, it is not specified, so it can be anything and also it will still change, swearing at Putin is now allowed, but for exactly the same swearing at Ukrainians you can also go to prison, but the hateful content is exactly the same." Or another comment " And who will ensure that those who will carry out these "regulatory" interventions are so well versed in the law (they should actually be judges by profession, right?) to be able to evaluate the contributions immediately and to judge whether or not they comply with the law??? "

Governments are clearly eager to tighten their censorship measures. But we have this free platform – Markethive.

                     Thank you for reading

                                                               Margaret