[laumars]

I’m a European so I’m usually one of the first to defend legislation of companies. But when it comes to censorship that should entirely be down to the platform. Some platforms might have a no nudity policy, some have a zero trolling rule. Others call fair game to all of the above. Different people like to engage on different levels: some are into high brow arts, others just want to trade stories about getting smashed on drugs. And there’s a whole plethora of interests in between from mums talking about the different shades of brown their kids have squeezed out this week to teenagers talking about nipple slips. None of them have any less right to talk in a safe space than the other. So why should there be a law disclosing what people can talk about?

Ok, I agree that Q Anon, anti-vax chat and so on and so forth causes more harm than good. But is it really the governments place to dictate that? What if the government was the one setting these narratives (not that hard to imagine given Trump and Johnson are two of the biggest serial liars in western political history)? Remember Trump threatened to shut Twitter down because Twitter fact checked Trumps post about election rigging.

For free speech to work, you absolutely need companies to be responsible for what they consider acceptable content rather than the government to dictate it.

[inglor_cz]

" Some platforms might have a no nudity policy, some have a zero trolling rule. Others call fair game to all of the above. "

If this all came with a duty of interoperability, I would be fine with that. But walled gardens that do their utmost to make leaving them really unpleasant and possibly expensive to the users ... that sounds a lot like coercion. And European law usually recognizes that individuals coerced, even softly, by large businesses, need protection.

[laumars]

That’s a separate problem though and should be handled like so. Dictating in law what content independent platforms can and cannot disallow doesn’t solve the walled garden problem. It just places greater challenges on new entrants / would-be competitors while still allowing walled gardens to exist. Plus you also then lose the diversity of TOS that might attract new users to new platforms. It’s a lose/lose outcome that doesn’t even attempt to solve the problem you’re identifying.