Poland Presses Facebook, YouTube to Stop ‘Misinformation’

The President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, has met with representatives of both Facebook and Google-owned YouTube, including the CEO of the latter, in order to discuss alleged Russian “disinformation” on the two platforms.

Poland’s government has taken a mixed approach to the question of online censorship, on the one hand promoting a law to protect the free speech rights of citizens from Silicon Valley censorship, but also pressing tech giants to deal with alleged Russian “disinformation” in the wake of the Ukraine conflict.

Duda recently met with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Facebook global affairs VP and former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg to discuss the issue.

Via the Polska Times (translated):

As reported by the Chancellery of the President, the meeting was also attended by ministers in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister: Paweł Szrot and Wojciech Kolarski, and the presidential advisor, Andrzej Zybertowicz.

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A few days ago, Andrzej Duda received Nick Clegg, the president of the Meta company, at the Presidential Palace. Established at the end of last year, the company owns brands such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The main topics of the talks were the company’s activities in Poland and the entire region in the face of the war in Ukraine. President Andrzej Duda spoke about the issue of preventing the dissemination of false information, disinformation and harmful content.

Previously, the Duda government has shown interest in tackling political censorship from Silicon Valley companies.

Following the censorship of President Trump by social media platforms in late 2020, culminating with the President being banned in January 2021, the ruling conservative government unveiled a law that would establish a free speech court that could impose fines of millions of euros on tech companies that did not restore content the court deemed to be wrongfully censored.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election. Follow him on Twitter @LibertarianBlue.