Breitbart London has produced a video to get the word out about the EU’s “Orwellian” new online censorship deal with Facebook and Twitter, after the story went under-reported in the mainstream media.
On Tuesday, unelected eurocrats and private corporations slashed the civil liberties of people all across Europe, restricting their right to free expression online with little public consultation or discussion, a Breitbart London reporter argues.
The EU announced on Tuesday that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft had “signed up” to a new ‘Code of Conduct’ containing a long list of new “commitments”.
They include working closely with the EU, national governments and “their law enforcement agencies” to “criminalise” perceived “illegal hate speech” online and censor it within 24 hours.
A measure that went almost completely unreported, however, was the promise that Twitter and Facebook will be “educating” and “informing” their users online, as well as “promoting” EU approved “counter-narratives”.
Breitbart London reporter Liam Deacon argues that this amounts to the tech firms acting like a “thought police”, who are “re-educating” European citizens and teaching them “the right way to think”.
This could be dangerous, because unlike existing hate speech laws, the ‘Code of Conduct’ will be arbitrated by unaccountable private corporations and unelected bureaucrats, giving EU citizens little power to challenge or scrutinise them.
The EU did very little to define what they mean by “hate speech” in the ‘Code of Conduct’, simply calling it speech that could “incite hatred” towards various minority groups. There is, therefore, a fear they will use this stretchable definition to silence criticism of their own policies – such open borders and mass migration.
Meanwhile, the BBC, the UK taxpayer funded national broadcaster, attacked those criticizing the new ‘Code of Conduct’ as “standing up for hate”.
Both left and right-wing organisation were quick to slam the ‘Code of Conduct’ this week, and as it is argued in the video, opposing “hate speech” laws does not equate to supporting hate.
It means you recognize free speech is an indivisible right, not just for those with the correct opinions; it means you maintain a healthy skepticism of government power; and it means you recognize hatred of intolerance is not always wrong.
With “hate speech” laws now commonplace in Europe, the Internet used to be seen as the final frontier for free speech, a place where dissenting voices could gather and unpopular opinions be heard. That era could now be over, the video suggests.
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