If You Don’t Want EU Style Censorship to Take Over the Internet, Support Section 230

upstart writes:

If You Don't Want EU Style Censorship To Take Over The Internet, Support Section 230:

Last summer, I mocked the EU a bit for setting up a new office in Silicon Valley, and sending an official here to "liaise with Silicon Valley companies affected by EU tech regulation," noting how it felt weird to have EU internet police setting up shop in Silicon Valley. Given that, I was a bit surprised that the new office invited me to "moderate" a panel discussion last month about the Digital Services Act (DSA), a bill I have regularly criticized and which I think is going to be dangerous for free speech on the internet.

There was no recording of the actual panel, but much of it involved me, as moderator, and Berkeley's Brandie Nonnecke (who was a panelist, but could have just as easily moderated the panel) quizzing the EU official sent to Silicon Valley, Gerard de Graaf, about how the DSA would actually work in practice, and specifically about our concerns regarding the potential censorial nature of the law. de Graaf insisted, repeatedly, that the DSA is "not a speech regulation," but then he basically kept going back to effectively admitting that it very much is a speech regulation. That is, he said it's not a speech regulation, it's just asking companies to have in place some practices to deal with "bad" speech. And, even as he kept insisting that it wasn't a speech regulation, he admitted that if it didn't lead to less misinformation online, EU officials would be disappointed.

Which... means it's a speech regulation.

[...] My takeaway is that the EU really wants to have it both ways. It wants to have speech regulation, but they know they can't call it speech regulation, so instead it's all just winks and nudges, telling companies they need to effectively disappear "unwanted" speech... or something bad might happen to them. [...]

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