Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
The amount of public space, both real and virtual, is decreasing dramatically. I think limits on private censorship should definitely exist.
Alright, so just for example let’s say I spin up a Lemmy instance on my computer and allow other people to make accounts on it. Why should the state be able to require me to store anything I don’t want on my PC?
Or do these limits only kick in for platforms above a certain size? And in that case, why would the same principle not apply?
That’s how it’s in the EU, the DSA only applies to large providers. It’s kinda like the fairness doctrine in broadcasting but in the digital domain, e.g. TikTok is currently in hot waters over the Romania elections because they did not take sufficient precautions to make sure that everything’s fair and square.
Because size obliges. If I want to smelt some cans in my backyard I can just do that provided I have a “fireplace” – which is just an area set up to be suitable to have a fire. If I want to build an industrial-scale aluminium smelter I have to get permits and everything. The public interest in the latter is much larger, that’s why I have to jump through hoops and follow regulations.
(I can’t burn garden waste though, gotta give it to the municipality to compost. A matter of waste of perfectly fine organic material and unnecessary emissions).
Excellent point