The “Humanity Steps Repeatedly on the Rake Called Social Media Challenge” is going swimmingly.
That’s scary, EU parliament summoning a publisher because they don’t like the preliminary election result in one of the member states.
I’d hoped they’d represent the people. Here, they’re doing the opposite.
@iii Nobody said that. It is not about not liking the outcome of an election. It is about the unchecked active disinformation happening there that literally brought a schizo who practices pseudoscience in the 1st place.
And it is also about DSA.
Nobody said that.
I know. These are my own thoughts.
It is not about not liking the outcome of an election.
There have been many elections in EU, concurrent to the existance of that publisher, that did not require their presence in front of the EU parliament.
What changed?
- Awareness of influence - of private and foreign huge social media platforms onto public discourse, opinion development, and political landscape
- Increasing foreign agent campaigns to influence and sabotage Europe governments and society
- Increased awareness of such foreign influences
- Unexpected/Unpredictable shifts in popularity [is how I read it]
with many concerns focused on how a TikTok campaign managed to propel an unknown candidate from obscurity
The change in EU response is very rapid. Bulgaria had national elections just days before. With politicians also using the same publisher for promotion.
with many concerns focused on how a TikTok campaign managed to propel an unknown candidate from obscurity
Obviously not unknown to the voters. Might the problem be that the person was unknown to the members of the EU parliament?
@iii He really was unknown, and I can tell you that as a Romanian. He was actually more known by some parts of our political establishment (or should I say, our former political establishment now) than the public. Literally every single person I spoke with was like, “who is this guy? I don’t know him. I only read about him a few days ago”. So no, it’s not like he had any public notoriety at all. Many people said online that they voted for him especially because he was unknown and wanted to “waste”/“cancel” their vote. I personally barely heard about him, I remember I heard about him when he was proposed by AUR as a prime minister a few years ago and that was it, I completely forgot about him again.
I only heard about him a few weeks prior to the election, but I always thought it was some weird ass candidate who thinks he’ll win the elections, but will barely gather 5% at best (we have these types across all the political spectrum). Then I also Googled a bit to find more info about him and found who he actually is. But I still thought he won’t reach the mainstream. Again, there are people that were more vocal during the campaigns, and they didn’t even reach 10%.
For reference, Trump had appeared in various TV shows like Fox&Friends or The Celebrity Apprentice, he appeared in the Home Alone series, he even got the Trump Tower. And overall, he was a really notorious and successful businessman. Georgescu had none of these. So even if the people were justified to vote for him (hell, I’m not denying this, vote for whoever you want, we’re a democracy after all), given this fact and declarations like the chance of Romania is the Russian wisdom and others like that, this is something that should be investigated.
It’s because they represent the people that they have to investigate whether the platform acted as a neutral platform or as a manipulative foreign agent sabotaging society.
