Comment by vanderZwan
5 months ago
> These EU Codes of Conduct are voluntary commitments and companies face no penalties if they decide to back out of the agreement, as Elon Musk did with X (then known as Twitter) in 2022 when he withdrew the company from the Code of Practice on Disinformation.
It's pretty obviously a PR stunt done in bad faith to delay actual legal consequences. I don't understand why this kind of "legal" construct even exists tbh.
Contrary to what seems to often be believed, the EU way of doing things is to try to make companies do their own agreement and policing, as to avoid the rigidity of regulation unless we absolutely have to.
Another example is how the EU asked the phone manufacturers to agree on a common charger for years on a good will basis, and only had to regulate when samsung said they were going to back out if no regulation was made because apple was not playing ball.
So the idea here is "guys, we really don't want to come here and make a law about what is or isn't allowed to be said or what has to be fact checked and everything, we want you to behave like adults and agree together about said rules".
I believe in this case, the fact that every company is part of the same country and same bunch of absurdly rich tech companies means it's never going to work at all.
> to try to make companies do their own agreement and policing, as to avoid the rigidity of regulation unless we absolutely have to.
This is precisely the censorship policy of the PRC. It ensures that nobody ever knows for sure what speech is permitted, so no speech is completely safe. Platforms compete for users by permitting marginally legal speech and compete for the favor of regulators by censoring it. This system is much more effective at suppressing political dissent than the US system, in which censorship decisions can be challenged in open court.
This is hyperbole.
The hardware and software industry has about a million standards that were collectively designed and adopted by the industry. Every single IETF RFC governing the internet and W3C RFCs governing browser standards for starters - we wouldn't be on this website having this conversation without those.
It's completely reasonable to say "multiple competing standards harms consumers with no benefit, come up with a common standard". This is what governments are supposed to do! If there is a single manufacturer not adhering to the standard it is reasonable to tell that manufacturer to comply. Is any reasonable person unhappy that we're all using common chargers for phones now?
Nor did this charger regulation seem to have negative consequences. Apple proactively licensed their wireless charging standard tech to the whole industry to get ahead of any legislation. Might not be great for Apple's profits, but I prefer that as a consumer.
8 replies →
but in case of hate speech it is relatively clear in most cases what is and isn't hate speech even through people on both sides love to pretend it isn't
2 replies →
Often here in the UK if there's a problem with a particular, the first step in regulation is for the government to talk to the trade body representing the industry and basically say "Regulate yourselves, or be regulated"
Then, if they're sensible, the industry creates a code of conduct that addresses the problems that drew the attention of legislators, without being too onerous; all the main players in the industry sign up and follow it; and the government doesn't have to pass legislation.
Politicians are happy because the problem goes away, and regulatory burdens on industry don't increase. Industry is happy because they get soft-touch regulation that's under their control.
It doesn't always work, of course.