They got the left cheering to support censorship in the guise of fighting "fake news" when it had the uppper hand, lest someone hurt someone's feelings.
Now it will be used againt it, and against in right wing dissidents to the establisment fairy tales too.
There's a giant difference between supporting changes to the law that allows further censorship and yelling at companies to be consistent about the enforcement of their own terms of service.
One's a law that everyone has to follow, while the other one's a made-up piece of text that the company can change at any point in time if they wish to do so.
And it seems increasingly clear that Ireland has become the main target in the disinformation war, and the main place where racist sentiments are being stoked. Absolutely tragic given Ireland's history of solidarity and anti colonialism
You can say this sort of stuff about almost anything. I don't see how doing "the little stuff" (relatively) like this takes away from doing "the big stuff". It's not like "the EU" is a single person who only has 24/hours a day to spend.
EU is financing rearmament and Ukraine deal, poaching scientists from the US, common economic and agricultural policies seem to be working. On the diplomacy front, hard to tell but they are showing a united and focused front against Trump. It is discussing some kind of closer cooperation with the UK. So in short, doesn't seem to be failing terribly at lots of things.
Do you think the EU is so bandwidth-limited it cannot do other things while discussing hate speech laws with Ireland?
Political failures compared to what other large bureaucracy? It is miles ahead, IMHO, US federal government or UN. Hard to compare to China.
Crimea is complex, but I can't really see what the EU could have done to prevent Brexit, while keeping itself whole. UK was so desperate to leave, they ended up crashing out.
I personally think the EU gets the blame for a whole load of things that are not really in their remit, while not getting the credit for other things it does well. Like hate speech laws, or the other things I listed.
Despite losing a relatively large economy in the block, the results of Brexit were so embarrassingly disastrous for the UK, that even the far right parties in the mainland, that had the common talking point of leaving the EU, had to switch their rhetoric to "reform" the EU (which is weakening it from the inside). Leaving the EU became sort of unpopular.
Great article, thanks for sharing. I enjoyed hearing the author's viewpoint, and his list of criteria for buying stuff can be useful with some minor adjustments. Also, the replies regarding his wife were hilarious, if a bit nosy and presumptuous (or maybe because of that).
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