A break down of proposals on “misinformation” speech control made to the EU

Over the past several turbulent years, the European Union (EU) has certainly not been without its own initiatives whose ultimate goal has been to significantly ramp up government regulation and impose stricter control of content, and by the same token, of creators and news and other information sources on the internet.

Two diverse, yet when all is said and done, disturbingly complementary examples spring to mind immediately: the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (that produced, among other things, the infamous Article 17), and then, the code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online - that, unlike the Directive, flew largely under the radar where general public is concerned (though certainly not when it comes to US tech giants that it aims to rope in and restrain).

But now, an extensive paper put together by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - a US think tank with offices in key countries around the world, that is often ranked as one of the most influential organizations of its kind globally - is essentially presenting a blueprint whose apparent hope is to assist the EU in drafting and implementing a new policy that would, on the face of it, fight disinformation campaigns aimed against EU's interests by means of effective deterrence - the potential of which the think tank believes is now severely underutilized.

The EU, of course, is a 27-member "conglomerate" of European countries, whose economic and brain power proven over the last 3-or-so millenia should be sufficient to guarantee they can come up with their own system to cut free speech, “misinformation”, or any other threat; but the first striking thing about the Carnegie document is that the powerful think tank doesn't seem to think the bloc is actually fully capable of formulating and articulating its own policy regarding (dis)information - and instead requires a helping hand.

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