More fear mongering related to elections (right now in Europe) – and yet another attempt to force more censorship on the strength of that fear.
This time, in Ireland, where the head of the country’s electoral commission, Art O’Leary, had a meeting with Big Tech to discuss how they are handling whatever gets branded as misinformation or disinformation.
And O’Leary came out of the meeting satisfied, in fact – “very happy.”
As if the scandalous collusion between the government and Big Tech was not a big topic in the US (having reached the Supreme Court) – over in Europe, a regulator has no qualms announcing there are now “safe channels” between tech juggernauts and his commission.
Either out of arrogance or ignorance, O’Leary revealed that he heard promises from Google, Meta, TikTok, X, etc. – that algorithms can get “reset” to tackle “misinformation.”
The result of such a “reset” is entirely predictable: posts will either not appear on users’ timelines, or will be deranked into the ground – in O’Leary’s own words, they will appear “so far down as to be unreadable.”
And that’s just, if there is something Big Tech is “not clear about – if any issue was being investigated for mis- and disinformation.”
What exactly he had in mind by “unreadable” is O’Leary’s secret, but he did go on to express concern about state-actors and those who are not – the pesky citizens who have, or think they have the right to speak their mind online.
And if that is not to the government’s liking, then O’Leary has a disparaging way of talking about them: they must be posting “at 12 o’clock at night after a couple of bottles of beer, possibly a couple of bottles of wine.”
But during the (presumably daytime, though you never know with murky affairs) meetings with Big Tech reps were apparently quite sober, and obliging.
“I have been pleased by the attitude and respect that they have shown to us and to the process as part of that conversation,” said the Irish electoral commission chair.
“These are not easy meetings for any of us because we have particular requirements but I’m very, very happy with the level of engagement,” he added.
His statements may come across as at times clownish, but O’Leary also knows how to make an open threat.
“It would be a sad day” if his commission “had to” go to High Court “to compel a social media company to take down a post or ban a user” – previous reports quoted him as saying.
In other words, “that’s a nice social media company you have there – it would be a shame if something happened to it.”
