EU and UK politics [OT]

[RolStoppable]

Tober said:

it might involve some very carefully targeted restrictions to free speech.

If one cannot win on The marketplace of free thought, one has to question if one's own perspective was as good to begin with. That's the problem with censorship. It's restricting the marketplace of free thought. Education, information and free debate is what is needed, not restricting it. Restricting will have the opposite effect long term, namely losing trust in one's leadership and democratic processes. Therefore opening up to radicalization in society.

Obviously Russia and USA always looked after their own interest first. That's nothing new. Trump is just more direct about it without the sugarcoating. What was happening behind closed doors between politicians arguing for decades is just more public now. The EU block was made to hold a stronger stance on the political stage after all.

Social media isn't a marketplace of free thought. It's rigged with algorithms and bots, so it's a marketplace for manipulation of free thought. The lack of laws against lies, deception and manipulation have allowed it that radical positions could be spread and normalized, so if governments continue to sit idle, then democracies will crumble one after another because too many voters cannot tell apart fact from fiction anymore.

If the solution to that should be education instead of more requirements and laws pertaining to social media platforms, then it's a lost cause. You can't educate people who are stuck within a bubble and will therefore never see material that helps them to do some critical thinking. We are already at the point where it's necessary that the bubble must be popped. Simply put, all social media platforms should be required to weed out lies, deception and misinformation, or otherwise they'll be banned from doing business.