Mediaboss Marketing

On Tuesday, an opinion piece was published on CNN, stating that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoan are both allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The author suggests, therefore, that Hungary and Turkey should be made irrelevant.

The article calls Orbn Putins closest ally in the European Union, mentioning that he has threatened to veto proposed sanctions on Russian oil that the other 26 member states have approved. Drawing parallels between the EU and NATO, the article continues: Similarly in NATO, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan isnot looking favorably at the possible accession of historically neutral powers Finland and Sweden, and on which the rest of the alliance is supportive of them joining.

CNN writes that thanks to such allies:

The op-ed also mentioned European Commission President Ursula von der Leyens visit to Budapest, on which we have also reported. It says that von der Leyen could report only that shed succeeded in clarify[ing] issues with the Hungarian strongman.

Related article

"We made progress, but further work is needed," Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, stated in a Twitter post.Continue reading

The article says that the solution to these toxic delays being forced by Hungary and Turkey is to do crave-outs:

Whats the worst Hungary or Turkey could do sue? Pull out?

Harvard Professor Robert I. Rotberg seems to agree with the idea: You are absolutely right to urge the EU to just forge ahead without Hungary. The unanimity rule was foolish to begin with and now is the time to test it. He adds, however, that Hungary could refer the decision to the European Court of Justice which is both bad and good.

As Index reports, another reading of the oil embargo issue is that Brussels made the decision on the embargo hastily, without due preparation, and neglecting practical economic considerations, which proved that the vetos control of Brussels decision-making by member states was justified. (A former MEP wrote an opinion piece on this on Index).

CNN also mentions the creation of an International Anti-Corruption Court. Rotberg believes that this would be a good place to try Erdoan, Orbn, Putin, and many more. That is why it is needed. So, we are moving. Such a court is being actively pursued by Rotberg together with a group consisting of some 40 former heads of state and an equal number of Nobel Prize winners, CNN writes. The article also mentions that Putin has been playing on the concept of unanimity for years.

Related article

The European Commission's 44-page notification letter mostly lists cases of suspected corruption in public procurements, explaining why they violate the EU budget and the rule of law.Continue reading

Now is the time for democracies to dig in their heels and proclaim that enough is enough that right will be forced to triumph. In the end, we will all be stronger for it, the article concludes.

The CNN op-ed was written by David A. Andelman, a veteran foreign correspondent, author, and commentator who contributes frequently to CNN Opinion on global affairs. To read the full article, click here.

Featured image via Zsolt Szigetvry/MTI

Read the original here:
CNN: Erdoan and Orbn Are Putin's Allies, They Have to Be Made "Irrelevant" - Hungary Today

by Dennis Crouch

Texas HB20 treats social media platforms as common carriers, especially those with very large number of users and market dominance. For its purposes, the law focuses on platforms with more than 50 million US monthly users and has a number of disclosure requirements. But, the heart of the new law is its prohibition on censorship.

CENSORSHIP PROHIBITED. (a) A social media platform may not censor a user, a users expression, or a users ability to receive the expression of another person based on: (1) the viewpoint of the user or another person; (2) the viewpoint represented in the users expression or another persons expression; or (3) a users geographic location in this state or any part of this state.

Censor means to block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression.

HB 20. The rule has a few exceptions. Censorship appears OK if done to protect intellectual property rights; based upon a request from an organization with the purpose of preventing the sexual exploitation of children and protecting survivors of sexual abuse from ongoing harassment or if user expression directly incites criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group because of their race, color, disability, religion, national origin or ancestry, age, sex, or status as a peace officer or judge. The law creates a private right of action for a censored user and also authorizes the state Attorney General to bring action.

The new law was passed by the Republican dominated Texas House and Senate and signed by Gov. Abbott back in 2021. But, before the law became effective a Federal District Court entered a preliminary injunction against its enforcement. Ordinarily, appeals are only proper after final judgment. One exception though is that a district courts decision regarding a preliminary injunction is ordinarily immediately appealable. And so the state of Texas has appealed the Preliminary Injunction to the 5th Circuit.

The news over the past two weeks: On May 9, the 5th Circuit heard oral arguments and two days laterissued a 1-sentence decision staying the preliminary injunction pending appeal (as the State requested). Here, the judges have not issued their final decision on whether the preliminary injunction was proper, but the stay suggests that their final decision will also favor Texas since a key element of relief here is likelihood of success on the merits. Those opposing the law have filed an emergency request with the US Supreme Court to reinstate the preliminary injunction during the appeal. Justice Alito is assigned to the Fifth Circuit region and so is set to decide the emergency petitionhowever, the full court could choose to weigh-in. Briefing in the SCOTUS case from Texas is due on May 18.

So to be clear, the decisions thus far have all focused on preliminary relief whether the law can be enforced while the trial & appeal is ongoing.

In prior cases, the Court has treated social media has an important avenue for speech. In Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730 (2017), for instance, the court found that prohibiting prior sex offenders from all social media violated those individuals speech rights since social media is the modern public square. Id. Here though, it is the social media platforms seeking the right to discriminate freely against viewpoints. Texas presents the argument that social media platforms are not speaking through their editorial role, but rather are taking technological actions to present the speech of others. Of course, publishing and dissemination of speech are also protected by the First Amendment, and those opposed to the law present this as an open-and-shut case.

From the moment users access a social media platform, everything they see is subject to editorial discretion by the platform in accordance with the platforms unique policies. Platforms dynamically create curated combinations of user-submitted expression, the platforms own expression, and advertisements. This editorial process involves prioritizing, arranging, and recommending content according to what users would like to see, how users would like to see it, and what content reflects (what the platform believes to be) accurate or interesting information.

SCT Brief.

Original post:
HB20: Social Media Censorship and the Supreme Court - Patently-O

One hashtag calling for the feature to be revoked quickly accumulated 8,000 posts and was viewed more than 100 million times before it was censored in late April. A university student in Zhejiang province sued Weibo, the Chinese social platform, in March for leaking personal information without his consent when the platform automatically showed his location. Others have pointed out the hypocrisy of the practice, since celebrities, government accounts, and the chief executive of Weibo have all been exempted from the location tags.

Despite the pushback, the authorities have signaled the changes are likely to last. An article in the state-run publication, China Comment, argued the location labels were necessary to cut off the black hand manipulating the narratives behind the internet cable. A draft regulation from the Cyberspace Administration of China, the countrys internet regulator, stipulates that user I.P. addresses must be displayed in a prominent way.

If censorship is about dealing with the messages and those who send the messages, this mechanism is really working on the audience, said Han Rongbin, a media and politics professor at the University of Georgia.

With the worsening relationship with United States and China and propaganda repeatedly blaming malign foreign forces for dissatisfaction in China, Mr. Han said the new policy could be quite effective at snuffing out complaints.

People worrying about foreign interference is a tendency right now. Thats why it works better than censorship. People buy it, he said.

An uncertain harvest. Chinese officials are issuing warnings that, after heavy rainfalls last autumn, a disappointing winter wheat harvestin June could drive food prices already high because of the war in Ukraine and bad weather in Asia and the United States further up, compounding hunger in the worlds poorest countries.

A pause on wealth redistribution. For much of last year, Chinas top leader, Xi Jinping, waged a fierce campaign to narrow social inequalitiesand usher in a new era of common prosperity. Now, as the economic outlook is increasingly clouded, the Communist Party is putting its campaign on the back burner.

The vitriol can be overwhelming. One Chinese citizen, Mr. Li, who spoke on the condition that only his surname be used for privacy reasons, was targeted by trolls after his profile was linked to the United States, where he lived. Nationalist influencers accused him of working from overseas to incite protest in western China over a post that criticized the local government of handling a students sudden death. The accounts listed him and several others as examples of spy infiltration. A post to publicly shame them was liked 100,000 times before it was eventually censored.

Inundated by derogatory messages, he had to change his Weibo user name to stop harassers from tracing him. Even though he has used Weibo for more than 10 years, he is wary of the baseless attacks these days. They want me to shut up, so Ill shut up, Mr. Li said.

Continue reading here:
Chinas Internet Censors Try a New Trick: Revealing Users Locations - The New York Times

WASHINGTON, D.C. More than a dozen states have new laws prohibiting schools from teaching certain topics in the classroom, including lessons related to racism, bias, and LGBTQ+ topics.

This week, Congress reviewed these policies and heard some passionate statements from several high school students about this issue.

Krisha Ramani, a high school student from Michigan, told lawmakers she has seen firsthand how some of these new policies are affecting her education.

Gen Z has the capacity and more importantly the willingness to learn about the issues affecting us, said Ramani. We want to participate in these tough conversations. We want to read about the diverse perspectives affecting us and efforts to regulate what can be taught in the classroom is an insult to a young persons ability to understand nuanced arguments.

These students are urging Congress to preserve their freedom of speech and protect their teachers.

Some of these new state laws will punish teachers who violate them.

Something has gone very wrong when teachers think they will be fired for supporting the concept of diversity, said Claire Mengel, a high school student from Ohio. Most critically students of color are being told by the highest authority in the district that their stories dont deserve to take up school time, school grounds or school resources.

Many Democrats believe these laws are undermining public education by banning literature, historical concepts and other classroom materials.

But some Republicans say these policies are set up to increase parental rights and transparency.

Our childrens innocence should be protected and prioritized and along with their potential for their personal and academic success, said Rep. Nancy Mace (R South Carolina).

Rep. Mace believes schools should focus on supporting students, especially those who are suffering from COVID-19 learning loss.

Our children should not be taught that they are oppressors or that they are victims merely based on the color of their skin. Instead, we should re-double down on our efforts to ensure that our children have the foundation to achieve their best and full potential, said Rep. Mace.

Some educators say these new laws are also contributing to the teacher shortage because its harder to recruit staff.

Congress working on legislation to help workers recover stolen wages

2022 Cox Media Group

Continued here:
Students share growing concerns over classroom censorship with Congress - WPXI Pittsburgh

Facebook held a conference call Tuesday to discuss which posts they most often remove and why, which was inconveniently timed after the weekends Buffalo mass shooting video was still on the platform.

One of the many depressing aspects of Saturdays racist mass shooting in Buffalo was how the grisly video proliferated on social networks. According to CNN, the shooter livestreamed it on Twitch, and to that streaming platforms great credit, the stream was cut off within two minutes. The Washington Post reports that only 22 people saw it.

But eventually Facebook enters the picture. Clearly some (if not all) of those 22 viewers were horrible white supremacist trolls, because according to the New York Times, the video was was posted on a site called Streamable and viewed more than three million times before it was removed. And a link to that video was shared hundreds of times across Facebook and Twitter hours after the shooting.

As of Tuesday, there were still a few copies of the video floating around on Facebook, according to that Washington Post report. And this is the unfortunate backdrop against which Facebook released a quarterly report on which posts they remove and why, as The Verge explains.

The report was accompanied by a conference call, as Facebooks parent company Meta now has these calls and reports quarterly, not long after the company's earnings calls. The call was scheduled well before the shooting took place, but obviously, Meta had some explaining to do.

People create new versions and new external links to try to evade our policies, vice president of integrity Guy Rosen said, according to AdWeek. We will continue to learn, refine our processes and refine our systems to ensure that we can take down these links more quickly in the future. Its only a couple of days after the incident, so we dont have any more to share at this point.

Meta also released the Facebook quarterly community standards enforcement report, which The Verge describes as a document that has a boring name, but is full of delight for those of us who are nosy and enjoy reading about the failures of artificial-intelligence systems.

And yes, human moderators are much better at recognizing genuinely problematic posts than bot moderators. Facebook counts up the posts they admit were wrongfully removed, and the bots wrongfully remove posts more frequently than human moderators. No surprise there.

What is a surprise, at least in the context of the current Big Tech censorship discourse, is that very little political speech is removed. The Verge sifted through the removed-post numbers and concluded Very little of it is political, at least in the sense of commentary about current events. Instead, its posts related to drugs, guns, self-harm, sex and nudity, spam and fake accounts, and bullying and harassment.

These are Facebooks own numbers, and not independently verified, so take that into account. But some standout numbers are that Facebook removed 1.6 billion fake accounts, and 2.5 million posts labeled "Terrorism and Organized Hate."

The current conservative horseshit grievances about Facebook censorship try to frame this as an attempt to attack free speech, all done by a company where Left Coast Liberals are supposedly in charge. This is a huge part of Elon Musks Twitter takeover discourse (to whatever degree said takeover is actually happening). And while I hate to give Facebook the benefit of the doubt, its pretty clear that the censorship claims are driven by bad-faith attempts to blur the line between political speech and actual violence. But since those bad-faith efforts have proven an excellent political talking point, there is no amount of transparency from Facebook that will likely change this.

Related: Facebook Relaxes (and Then Reverses) Its Rules Over Calling for Leaders to Be Killed, Because of Putin [SFist]

Image: Solen Feyissa via Unsplash

See the article here:
Facebook Releases Report On Which Posts They Remove and Censor, Turns Out Most Aren't Political - SFist