Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský is in Davos, for the World Economic Forum (WEF). There, he offered his two-euro-cents about “misinformation” and democracy – albeit referring to the former as “false content.”
Davos is just the right place for the minister to try to press home the “mantra” of “global solutions.”
In this case – “a global solution (…) and to have a global discussion about the way [sic] how we communicate.”
“How we communicate?” There may be a bit of a language barrier here, but is Mr. Lipavský actually talking up the merits of speech control, by any other name?
Doesn’t seem unlikely, because some of the other phrases that came out of his mouth included “government accountability” and quite directly, a mention of “control” of technology that is made possible through government intervention, that is, “regulation.”
(It’s not inconceivable that somewhere in the WEF corridors, China’s representatives were nodding approvingly…)
Meanwhile, let’s see how it should work, according to the government in Prague and its rep. They certainly have a lot on their plate right now, but apparently, elections in various countries around the world seem to be top of agenda, and who better to talk about that, than a foreign minister.
But even if they tend to talk about “4 million people across the globe” going to the polls, and how to gently, or not so gently, nudge them to pick “the proper” candidates – it always comes back to the one election that really matters, especially to outfits like the WEF – the US presidential vote.
But gatherings like this will go out of their way not to always focus on that election, and will talk in circles, warning that “what is happening in one country today might happen in another country tomorrow” thanks to (or because of) globally available internet platforms.
And so, perhaps test “regulation” in one – to then implement it in another.
What taxpayers (around the world) should perhaps be even more worried about than the by now customary attacks on speech is just how little original idea or even turn of phrase those they push it have to offer, sounding instead like they’re all reading from the same playbook.
Case in point, Lipavský: “We need a really global solution and to have a global discussion about the way how we communicate as people, which content and how are we presented”; (…) And definitely we will see more and more false content being used as something which will disturb the election process, which will disturb the way how the society makes decisions.”
“So…the kind of regulation or possession or control of those technologies needs to be developed, (so) that the governments will be sure that it is not going against the interests of the governments,” the minister also said.
