2nd chamber chairman Bergkamp asks Twitter to act against threats
Now I am absolutely not eager to step into the breach for politicians. They have the power. We have the right to look at them with a squint and occasionally to raise our fist in a rowdy way. Denouncing those in power for everything that God has forbidden is a proud Republican tradition that dates back at least to the Romans. But coming up with creative ways to compare your social superior to coprolites is one thing, threatening physical violence quite another. It is worrying that the number of threats against politicians is increasing almost exponentially.
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The letter from chairman Bergkamp
The chairman of the House of Representatives, Vera Bergkamp of D66, therefore thinks it is high time that action was taken. A lot of the threats come from the internet, and so she has sent a letter Unpleasant the most mature and capable CEO in tech land, Elon Reeve Musk. If I were Vera I would have saved myself the trouble.
Bergkamp himself also admits that it is currently difficult to enter into a dialogue with Twitter. Nevertheless, she considers it important to take action and send a message. Several MPs agree with that point of view, although many of them share my skepticism. “When you see how Elon Musk treats Twitter and its users, I don’t have much faith in it.” According to GroenLinks party chairman Jesse Klaver. The problem, a large increase in calls for violence and even murder on platforms such as Twitter, is clear. So there is absolutely nothing to do about it.
That is Bergkamp’s point of view. “If you have a cafe where people threaten others, the owner does not say that it is not his responsibility.” The problem is that this position, at least according to the American legal system, is completely wrong. Quite a few messages are posted on a platform like Twitter every day. A sloppy 500 million Tweets to be exact. That it is impossible for a company like Twitter to keep an eye on all those messages is logically completely impossible.
That is an exceptional position. Newspapers, for example, are legally responsible for what they publish. But a newspaper does not publish anything without the knowledge of editors and, in the case of larger publications, the legal department. As said, a Twitter can’t do that. If you do hold such a company liable for all content that is “published” on their platform, then there is really only one solution: no Twitter. Sounds nice, but this actually applies to the entire internet.
Doesn’t mean of course that a website can shrug their shoulders and hide behind the law while the most horrible things are about the main page. A website may not be legally liable, recent experiments by right-wing alternatives on Twitter have once again made it clear that content should be moderated for the enjoyment and safety of users.
Twitter hardly has any content moderators
However, it is highly questionable how chairman Bergkamp expects Elon Musk’s Twitter to tackle this problem. As a true visionary, Musk went through the workforce with a knife after taking office as CEO. The content moderation department, the department responsible for finding and removing unwanted content, was perhaps the hardest hit.
The consequences were immediately measurable. More hateful content and more fake news and disinformation. Bergkamp is certainly not the first to pen an angry letter to Silicon Valley Golden Boy Elon. Some 70 civic organizations preceded her. What was the result? Shall I link Elon’s Twitter post from the beginning of this article again?
Things are now so disgraceful on the platform that even the EU has started to get involved. Last March, the European Commission called on Twitter to hire more content moderators. The Commission cited the same worrying increase in hate speech and disinformation as the reason for the call.
No response yet
At the time of writing this article, no response has yet been received from Twitter. Shocker, I know. I will be very surprised if anything else comes up. Elon has described himself several times as a “free speech absolutist”. Unless it concerns content that personally irritates Musk. Or when an autocratic regime threatens to block all of Twitter. So Musk obviously just does what he likes, and bullying politicians is apparently Mr. hobby No. 1. That and inadvertently torpedoing the chances of aspiring presidential candidates.
That someone on Twitter explains in great detail how this person is going to kill you must be terrifying. I also understand that a message is being carried into the world from Dutch politicians. But if you ask me there is only one solution to this problem, in the specific context of Twitter: Like Musk himself, just ignore it and stop taking it seriously. Because the only responses you’ll get from Musk are memes and poop emojis.
