Benjamin Kuras: Disinformation World Forum
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1/21/2023
In addition to the relevant laws, the European Union already has the necessary language defining its policy against illegal hate speech, with which online platforms monitoring Internet communications will work. This special language will need a special type of people to understand it in order to determine what is and is not hate speech. These online platforms will work with this language and identify such cases.
This seems to be – at the very limit of comprehensibility – the main point of our message delivered in Davos at the meeting of the WEF World Economic Forum by the squeamish Commissioner for European Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová.
This non-accuracy translation appears to be an English version of her speech at a panel discussion titled “The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation” from the English media record. Perhaps the Commissioner herself will give her Czech version to the Czech media, so that we know exactly what Brussels is planning for us, the naughty writers.
The following is worth noting in this part of her speech: The oversight of information is entrusted to the hands of properly trained people and not left to artificial intelligence and clever algorithms. Apart from the fact that these jobs will create a lot of new jobs at the expense of European taxpayers, it’s also because (her discussion post continues) that in the media “a lie sells better than the truth, and we’re not going to stop that, so if the algorithms are just going to work towards better business and better profit – and we want to stop this trend with these rules.” It is said that this is about “philosophical questions”, such as whether society is doing enough to “make the truth more attractive than lies”.
To this fight for “citizens’ rights to corrected information” (as Prime Minister Fiala calls it), the European advertising industry is already joining (the commissioner boasted) the “demonetization of misinformation”. In other words, by promising (willingness, effort, voluntary discipline or coercion – cross out the ones that don’t fit) not to submit paid advertising to “spreaders of misinformation”.
So that no one might envy Europeans the privilege of information refinement, the Americans also joined the discussion on the topic “how can the public, regulatory authorities and Internet companies better cooperate in countering disinformation when information pollution is spreading at an unprecedented speed and in an unprecedented amount.” And not just any other: the head of The New York Times Company, AG Sulzberger, spoke for you.
He affirmed that disinformation is “the biggest current we are dealing with as a society,” and that it is “corrupting the information ecosystem.” It also “splits society”, “undermines pluralism” and can cause “the collapse of societies and democracy”. Therefore, sources of credible information should be “promoted” above them.
A great recipe: Promote the New York Times, eliminate the competition (in the Czech context, replace the relevant one with a state subsidy of 150 million). An environmentally friendly approach. We no longer have just any media, one or the other, left or right, serious or tabloid, pro-government or opposition, entertaining or boring. We have an information ecosystem. And that guy sometimes spoils, disrupts and threatens something and someone, and he could collapse with every wrong message, like our planet. Sometimes there is a threat of greenhouse gases, sometimes a carbon footprint, sometimes cow farts, sometimes misinformation.
However, we still lack a precise definition of what disinformation actually is, according to which scientific bulletproof rules they will be classified, how they will be allowed to prove or disprove, what makes information disinformation and disinformation information, who and how it harms, and who will decide about it .
However, we will definitely be pleased to see that someone in Brussels and Davos got a taste for power. At least we have someone to be proud of.
You can find Kuras’s books here: http://www.pi-shop.cz/kuras/