Is EU Censorship Coming to America?—Here's What You Need to Know: David Thunder
American Thought Leaders
The Epoch Times
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2023
⏱️ 49 minutes
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Summary
What will be the impact of the European Union’s sweeping new rules for Big Tech, not just on Europe, but also on America?
“The issue with this legislation is that there are extremely vague categories such as misinformation and hate speech that are very, very difficult to define in law … so this opens the door to a form of arbitrary bureaucratic power over the platforms,” says David Thunder.
He’s a political philosopher and a research fellow at the Institute for Culture & Society at the University of Navarra.
“They can also declare an emergency. And in the event of declaring an emergency, require the platforms to take special measures to counteract the emergency,” says Mr. Thunder. “So it can become part of a war machine, in a sense.”
Mr. Thunder is the author of “Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life.”
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What's most troubling about this legislation is that there are extremely vague categories |
| 0:06.2 | such as misinformation and hate speech that are very, very difficult to define in law, |
| 0:13.1 | so this opens the door to a form of arbitrary bureaucratic power over the platforms. |
| 0:20.2 | What will be the impact of the European Union sweeping new rules for big tech, |
| 0:25.6 | not just on Europe, but also on America? |
| 0:28.3 | They can also declare an emergency, and in the event of declaring an emergency, |
| 0:32.8 | require the platform to take special measures to counteract the emergency. |
| 0:38.0 | In this episode, I sit down with David Thunder, a political philosopher and research fellow at |
| 0:43.1 | the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navara. This is American Thought Leaders |
| 0:48.5 | and I'm Janja Kellek. |
| 0:52.8 | David Thunder, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. |
| 0:56.1 | Thank you. It's great to be here, Jan. Why don't we just jump right into it? What is this |
| 1:01.4 | Digital Services Act? |
| 1:04.7 | Well, the Digital Services Act is a piece of legislation that just went through the European |
| 1:10.6 | Parliament recently, and it actually is concerned with the regulation of online platforms, |
| 1:18.2 | such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and so on. It covers a broad range of issues. |
| 1:26.0 | Including child pornography, transparency of terms and conditions, |
| 1:31.2 | and the standardization of the regulations across the European Union that affect these platforms. |
| 1:41.1 | But from my point of view, what's most troubling about this legislation is its treatment of |
| 1:49.8 | basically its introduced a form of censorship of these platforms by the European Commission, |
| 1:59.1 | specifically through issues such as hate speech and disinformation, because it gives the European |
| 2:07.0 | Commission oversight over these platforms, and they can actually undertake a kind of review of |
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