Rather than trusting internet users to be able to make up their own minds about the content they encounter online, the Council of the European Union wants to ‘educate’ influencers about their “responsibility” – that is, teaching them to identify “disinformation” and “hate speech,” phrases commonly used by Eurocrats to clamp down on dissident political viewpoints.
As reported by the European Conservative, the Council is trying to formulate a unified approach to rein in influencers’ and online content creators’ dissemination of ‘harmful’ content. The report continues:
Through the use of EU funds, the Belgian presidency of the Council has already recommended that the Commission support the ‘cognitive’ and ‘ethical’ skills of influencers to better equip them understand how their contents “impact on their followers” and how to react “to disinformation, online hate speech [and] cyberbullying”—in other words, make them part of the bloc’s messaging strategy.
The draft defines influencers as:
Online content creators who post content on social media or video sharing platforms through which they impact society, public opinion or personal views of their audience, often showcased through their authenticity-based relationship with their audience.
This definition is different from the one in France’s influencer law, which was passed last year, and was the first of its kind. French lawmakers defined influencers as people “who, in exchange for a fee, use their reputation to communicate with their [online] audience.”
The EU Council’s draft suggests it is pursuing a more stringent policy than anticipated. An earlier draft cited the importance of supporting influencers since they can have a ‘positive’ impact on online culture. The latest draft, however, states:
[Influencers] should have a sense of responsibility towards their audience and understand the potential impact that commercial practices, sharing mis- and disinformation, online hate speech, cyberbullying and other harmful content may have on their audience and its well-being.
To rectify this state of affairs, the Council calls on the European Commission to reflect on an approach to influencers on “all relevant policy areas, with a focus on their responsible behaviour.”
The problem, of course, is that phrases like ‘mis-’ and ‘disinformation’ are often now little more than euphemisms for perfectly lawful views on trans ideology, climate change, vaccine mandates, mass migration and so on, that Europe’s ‘progressive’ political elites happen not to like for ideological reasons.
Worth reading in full.
