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10/01/2020

War of the Social Worlds: Twitter attacked the Hungarian government

War of the Social Worlds: Twitter attacked the Hungarian government

Twitter blocked the official account of the Hungarian government without explanation, state secretary for international communications and relations Zoltán Kovács told Facebook on Wednesday.

“This is rather intriguing given the European Commission is publishing its first report on the rule of law on Wednesday,” Kovács wrote.

“It seems that Brave New World has finally arrived,” he added.

According to him, “techies” were “absurdly silencing” people who had a different opinion from their liberal views.

In the case of Hungary, this looks particularly absurd given the simultaneous release of the EU Commission’s Rule of Law Report, which blames Hungary for the lack of democratic debate and dissent, including a free press and civil society sector. But it is not some undesirable media or politicians in Hungary who are blocked, but a public account, without warning or explanation.

“The Commission’s Rule of Law Report is not only fallacious, but absurd. It cannot serve as a basis for any further discussion on rule of law in the European Union”, official Hungarian government commented it.

The Commission’s Report on the Rule of Law makes no reference to objective benchmarks that apply equally to all Member States, the Hungarians stressed in the statement.

“Hungary is one of the few Member States where genuine pluralism prevails in the media, in ideological debates, and in the public sphere in general. Unlike the Western European media landscape, which is overwhelmingly dominated by leftist and liberal outlets, in Hungary the situation is more balanced, with conservative and Christian Democratic views also receiving meaningful coverage in the public sphere”.

However, Twitter is not convinced by this.

Facebook alternatives: There are many options, but the problem goes deeper

Monopoly giants 

Hungary is not the only country that has suffered from such a totalitarian attitude of digital giants. It is worth noting that recent years have become especially tough on Youtube, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram on users’ blogs, mostly for no apparent reason.

The giants profess a double standard. On the one hand, they delete accounts based on a vague ‘political content’ policy. For example, even if companies promote environmental energy, which fits well into the sphere of globalist agenda, but dilute ads with too much political connotation, they perpetuate advertising.

On the other hand, open political accounts can also be blocked without any hidden advertising – just to prevent promotion during the official election campaign. Twitter said it would prevent President Trump’s campaign account (@TeamTrump) from tweeting until it removed a Twitter-breaking Covid-19 misinformation Twitter account.

That is, social networks become so self-assured that they are not afraid to block the leaders of countries, presidents and governments. This includes tearing down the personal posts of President Trump on Facebook.

This is not all that these networks do. During the protests, they actively promote posts and messages that help coordinate the opposition of different countries, introduce misinformation, create a filtered and engaged search system (Google) and remain unpunished for any blocking of unwanted accounts.

Recent examples in the Turkish segment include the temporary blocking on Twitter Turkish Diplomat, former Consul General in Chicago Umut Acar. 

Turkey had previously criticized Twitter for suspending more than 7,000 accounts supporting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan without warning, saying the company was smearing the government and trying to restructure Turkish politics.

Twitter said the accounts were allegedly being used to strengthen the political position of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

How do the Western powers use social networks for their own political goals?

Blockage War

Is it really impossible to do anything with the totalitarianism of the listed corporations? There is a way out.

The war against them has already started in the USA. The U.S. Department of Justice intends to sue Google Alphabet and is currently calling on state attorneys general to sign this suit.

The lawsuit will be the first real blow after the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission said last year they opened antitrust investigations by Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. And these efforts are appreciated by many Democrats and Republicans.

Someone went a more radical and simple way. For example, China, which simply banned the use of enemy social networks that collect information about users in China and at the same time demonizing the image of their country. The system is still working, and a lot of analogs have been created, which have entered the world market. 

In addition, recently, due to the escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh and to avoid online provocation, Azerbaijan has also blocked major networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, TikTok, Skype and some other services). The protesting Belarus also had Internet disruptions”, which were designed to deprive the social network of attempts to intercept the initiative of the masses and turn the protests into a globalist key.

In Turkey, it has long been said that it is necessary to leave these platforms. Now, not only in practice, but also in reality: from today Turkey officially begins to control local Facebook and Twitter, as they regularly violate the country’s legislation. 

Under the new rules, platforms with more than a million daily users must open offices in Turkey that can deal with local court decisions to remove offensive content within 48 hours. Otherwise, they face advertising bans, fines of up to 40 million Turkish lira (5.1 million USD) and – most importantly – bandwidth reductions of up to 90 percent, making platforms effectively unusable.

In our material earlier we drew attention to potential alternatives to Facebook and Co.

Now it is a question of the will of each state – how to squeeze social giants out of their country as a foreign and malicious element.

United World International

Independent analytical center where political scientists and experts in international relations from various countries exchange their opinions and views.

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