We have several major social media banned here, and they're still popular. All a ban would do would be teaching people what VPNs are... As well as exposing a lot of them to malware, because most people would not be doing research and instead of legitimate, charity-run free censorship evasion tools, they'd be using shady apps from the top of Play Store search results.

If the ban comes from "up top", people's desire to use it will not suddenly disappear. If the people decide to leave en masse on their own - now that'd make an impact.

What about banning any non-federated social network?

"I consider X a threat to both privacy and freedom."

*uses change.org instead of the EU mechanism to submit petitions to the parliament...

This has to have been made by an American living in Europe.

Let me guess, you think Russia/China/etc. banning websites is bad (because obviously they are doing it due to being authoriatarian regimes and to not let people learn the truth), and EU (or generally any western country) banning websites is good (because obviously it would be done to protect democracy and people from consuming dangerous misinformation)?
Did I miss anything? :)

I don't know

Wouldn't that enable an angle of "martyr for freedom of speech"?

And while I agree that it stopped being what it was and we can't rely on it anymore, wouldn't that separate EU from the rest of the world given current market share?

In my opinion: abandon - yes. Ban - no

Musk has openly supported right-wing politicians such as Trump and Meloni in Italy

Not right-wing, far right. Or fascists. Even though Meloni is much more coherent than Trump so it's difficult to put both of them in the same basket.

Idk why a ban is necessary. Just remove some of the protections so they can be held liable for things they should be held liable for.

They're currently not liable for third-party content (if they have reasonable moderation policies and respond in a timely manner to requests, yada yada). But if they promote it, they are no longer a passive hosting platform; they are actively promoting content so should be held proportionately liable for that content.

self-censorship 😂 wonderful

As much as I hate X, I might have to think about this one for a while. Sure, this platform is a vessel for fascist propaganda and a threat to democracy, but on the other hand, creating a legitimate precedent for banning a social network on political grounds might be a slippery slope. The EU has already made dubious reforms regarding internet freedom, like their antiterrorist bill which require website hosts to remove content whithin an hour if it is signaled to them by the police. I'm not sure if giving them more power and legitimacy in policing online content is a good idea...

Ban surveillance advertising and help speed the demise of the site, or mandate interop and make it easy for those still on it to take their followers with them, but holy fuck bro—calling for a government to ban a communications platform for an entire continent?

Fuck that platform, if it dies right now the world will be a better place overnight. That being said, I’m against it being banned - imo if we’re petitioning for anything, it should be to get governments off of it and onto better alternatives.

The EU can and should ban government and business's from using twitter as part of their official communications. But if private citizens wants to tweet, then sure go for it, even the EU with it's less then stellar speech record, particularly with the labeling antisemitism, still allows freedom of association.

"It's not censorship, it's counter-disinformation measures!! 1!"

I also think he should be investigated for buying votes in the recent election.

Don't think it's a good thing to ban anything from anywhere. The best way is to make them realize how bad mainstreams socials are bad. Everyone is concerned about the Elon Musk's social but nobody care when GAMAM harvest your datas

Why do you people talk about defending and supporting democracy, but never talk about that the population has a right to vote for anti-government people? Democracy is about following the will of the people, and if the majority of the people vote to cut government, eliminate government, and start taking powers away from government rule, democracy says to follow the vote of the people.

Fedi for the win.

https://alternativeto.net/software/twitter/?license=opensource&p=2

On a related note: does anybody think that Nostr will ever gain real traction? Promising project, I try it again every other month but it's still pretty rough...

Also: the fact that Dorsey has funded it and is a fan concerns me.

i wonder if elon would prod trump to make good on their threat to defund nato if the eu cancels twitter. how would it impact ukraine?