# Poland cracking down on Big Tech



## BlazeMasterBM (Jan 17, 2021)

looks like Poland is coming with a new idea of censorship on big tech. Looks great, it's about time they had some consequences for their actions. But will it work?
https://news.yahoo.com/poland-proposes-social-media-free-183203593.html


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## Xzi (Jan 17, 2021)

BlazeMasterBM said:


> But will it work?


No.  Assuming the threat isn't toothless, they'll just stop operating in Poland.  If it were a country with a massive population, like China, that would be a different matter.


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## BlazeMasterBM (Jan 17, 2021)

Xzi said:


> No.  Assuming the threat isn't toothless, they'll just stop operating in Poland.  If it were a country with a massive population, like China, that would be a different matter.


Agreed, but it could be the start of something. Wonder if they'll make their own websites


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## smf (Jan 17, 2021)

Xzi said:


> No.  Assuming the threat isn't toothless, they'll just stop operating in Poland.  If it were a country with a massive population, like China, that would be a different matter.



I think it will be interesting how the EU as a whole reacts, they could either back poland or oppose it.

I'm not entirely sure how they'll force a company to offer services to people that they don't want to outside of groups protected by discrimination laws) & what that means for law enforcement. Would sharing bomb making documents & romance fraud be free speech for example?


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## notimp (Jan 18, 2021)

BlazeMasterBM said:


> looks like Poland is coming with a new idea of censorship on big tech. Looks great, it's about time they had some consequences for their actions. But will it work?
> https://news.yahoo.com/poland-proposes-social-media-free-183203593.html


Well, the question is HOW will it work - and the answer still is:

- Social media companies need protection from liability laws as pertaining to individuals, because they are really, really big scale. Meaning a small percentage of people suing will end up being a very sizable problem for them.
Also even if they are forced to do 'checkups' on 'wrongfully deleted posts' - they cant - because at that scale, thats real money. (And they already outsource their snuff and kiddy pron screeners to countries, where they dont have to pay for those peoples mental problems afterwards - or looked at it the other way around, they dont build up sizable local subsidiaries in every country, that would even be equipped to tackle the issue 'in a per country' way. Also, in many markets they are in they cant, because to them its not financially viable.)

- As a result, if you force them to 'put back content - after screening, if wrongfully deleted, they'll simply stop screening for political extremism.

Thats the entire result this likely will have.

They also cant afford to make this a precedent that too many other countries are following.

They'll check a flag differently and thats all. No structural change coming out of it.


Also poland has a pretty right wing government, that resorts to some pretty obscure populist messaging - so you also have to see it in that light also. They mostly dont want to get into conflict with voters telling them - hey facebook banned me for promoting something you said - so 'removing the flag to algorithmically delete extreme political content' - to them is more than enough.

Also, because of that - its pretty unlikely that polish representatives would spearhead an EU wide movement so that this 'becomes more' than that.


edit: The real problem (as I see it) is Facebook not making counterspeech stick. Because everyone just happy in their own bubbles, and advertisers like very much, and more time spent on facebook as a result, they simply scroll your personalized feed, WHICH IS NOT aggregated by 'most recent post first', but by - 'hey you like to click on stuff like that'. So when people get into BS, they dont know that its BS at first (as seen by a societal majority), they simply never see an adverse reaction to the stuff they like. Here is next content that you like, that scrolls by! (That mentality is also very advertiser friendly.)

And when they do, they are more likely to retract back into bubble, suckling on thumb. Which makes them better advertising targets as well.


edit: The other way arround this is to flag 'VIP accounts' to which certain rules dont apply. And then say 'retweeting those is ok'. Society cant differentiate what they do anyhow. But that gives politicians negative feedback, because - "when I said it, it was deleted...". They are - for sure - engaged in some of that.

edit2: More info -


> Morawiecki called on the EU to introduce similar regulations. Other European politicians, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, have also expressed unease at the ban on Trump by various social media outlets, and a new EU proposal, the Digital Services Act, envisions tougher regulations on tech companies, including tough fines for failure to block illegal content.


src: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ns-to-make-censoring-of-social-media-accounts

That approach (fines for not blocking illegal content), is much easier for them, because they can start shadowbanning, and call it a day. (So in some cases (say politiclal extremism), they start to tune down the reach of the content - less people see it, politicians dont get blasted (at least not the important ones), people dont sue them, because they dont know that they were shadowbanned. Everyone happy. Except for democracy.)


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## FAST6191 (Jan 18, 2021)

In before suddenly Polish opposition party showing unexpected swelling in support whilst Polish current party and supporters of this bill suddenly shown to be as corrupt as any country that ever put "people's democratic republic of" in front of their name on Polish twatter and facebook.


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## Julie_Pilgrim (Jan 29, 2021)

BlazeMasterBM said:


> Agreed, but it could be the start of something. Wonder if they'll make their own websites


I doubt it’ll start anything


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## Luckkill4u (Jan 29, 2021)

Well, it's not like Poland is new to this type of censorship since they were stuck in Soviet-Communism for 40-something years. It's understandable that the Polish government takes their freedom of speech seriously, but there may not be much Poland can do. Really it's time for the citizens to give a big middle finger to these Silicon Valley Biog Tech companies and dump these monopolistic big tech companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google.


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## stanleyopar2000 (Jan 29, 2021)

"freedom of speech council"

So a "ministry of truth."  Great.


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## chrisrlink (Jan 30, 2021)

FAST6191 said:


> In before suddenly Polish opposition party showing unexpected swelling in support whilst Polish current party and supporters of this bill suddenly shown to be as corrupt as any country that ever put "people's democratic republic of" in front of their name on Polish twatter and facebook.


any country with Peoples (democratic) republic of.....reeks of communism, as i keep saying communism can be good or rather a monarchy depending on human rights policy i mean look at the US the two sided political system is an utter failure we'll wait and see if poland goes the way austria did a year or 2 ago ever since Brexit the EU is on the verge of collapse


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