{"id":56466,"date":"2021-01-20T08:55:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T13:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56466"},"modified":"2021-01-20T08:55:32","modified_gmt":"2021-01-20T13:55:32","slug":"angela-merkel-attacks-twitter-over-trump-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56466","title":{"rendered":"Angela Merkel attacks Twitter over Trump ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angela Merkel attacks Twitter over Trump ban <\/a><\/h3>\n

Russian dissident Alexei Navalny echoes criticisms levelled by German chancellor\u2019s spokesman <\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Merkel, German chancellor, has sharply criticised Twitter\u2019s decision to ban US president Donald Trump, calling it a \u201cproblematic\u201d breach of the \u201cfundamental right to free speech\u201d.<\/p>\n

Twitter suspended Mr Trump\u2019s account last week in the aftermath of the riots at the Capitol Building, citing \u201crepeated and severe\u201d violations of its civic integrity policies. Facebook has taken similar action.<\/p>\n

But Ms Merkel said through her spokesman that the US government should follow Germany\u2019s lead in adopting laws that restrict online incitement, rather than leaving it up to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to make up their own rules.<\/p>\n

The intervention highlights a key area of disagreement between the US and Europe on how to regulate social media platforms. The EU wants to give regulators more powers to force internet platforms such as Facebook or Twitter to remove illegal content.<\/p>\n

In the US, technology companies have traditionally been left to themselves to police their own sites, though momentum is gathering behind political moves to curtail their regulatory freedoms. Several members of Congress are working on bills which would limit the legal protections social media companies have from being sued for third-party content posted on their sites. Others are pushing for a new federal data privacy bill that could mirror the EU\u2019s General Data Protection Regulation.<\/p>\n

Twitter\u2019s share price fell more than 7 per cent on Monday to about $48, as investors were spooked by the renewed debate into the prospect of tighter social media regulation.<\/p>\n

Ms Merkel\u2019s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said free speech was a \u201cfundamental right of vital importance\u201d that could be restricted, \u201cbut only in accordance with the laws and within a framework defined by the legislator \u2014 not by the decision of the management of social media platforms\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angela Merkel attacks Twitter over Trump ban Russian dissident Alexei Navalny echoes criticisms levelled by German chancellor\u2019s spokesman Angela Merkel, German chancellor, has sharply criticised Twitter\u2019s decision to ban US president Donald Trump, calling it a \u201cproblematic\u201d breach of the \u201cfundamental right to free speech\u201d. Twitter suspended Mr Trump\u2019s account last week in the aftermath […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1890,120,7844,8262,1169,819],"class_list":["post-56466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-angela-merkel","tag-censorship","tag-donald-trump","tag-financial-times","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56467,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56466\/revisions\/56467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}