RE: EU in 'Final Stages' of Law to Force Big Tech Censorship of 'Extremist' Content
I've been saying this for a long time now, Chinese style censorship is coming. It's actually already here, Europe is the testbed and like many of Europes policies they'll be rolled out across the U.S and the Asia Pacific.
Case in point being the GDPR. People think it's a great idea, people assume it's to protect consumers and some provisions do, but it's nothing more than another policy designed to control both consumers and companies. It's the precursor to regulating online companies, a test.
As we have seen in the U.S, American companies voluntarily implemented GDPR compliance into their apps (especially with European users). It's a case of legislation only applicable to Europe overextending its reach to other countries and I bet they love it.
It's a scary time for the internet and freedom.
GDPR is a HUGE pain in the ass for businesses (I should know), but it does offer better theoretical consumer protection with regards to their data.
That being said, I see GDPR no more than a trojan horse: the EU shows their people that "Hey, we care about you and our digital laws are good for you". People see that GDPR is inherently beningn, so in the future they won't scrutinize internet legislation as much, and just assume it isn't bad, because GDPR wasn't bad.
Yeah, that's how I see it too. First there, then across the Western world :/