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X to be investigated for allegedly breaking EU laws on hate speech and fake news (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 10 months ago by RandAlThor@lemmy.ca to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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[-] rtxn@lemmy.world 25 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

In the US, you always have to consider the benefits and risks to an elected official. Republicans would get nothing out of putting their new golden boy under a magnifier, but I'm certain that if a democrat tried it, they'd get slandered to hell and back.

The EU probably has no such concern. I don't know how the EC's members are picked, but partisanship is probably not as huge a factor. Eventually some EC members were bound to grow a backbone.

[-] Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

I'm not up on EU politics all that much, so I hope someone more informed comes along and posts a better answer, but...

My distant view + guess for as to why it's different is that they have more than one party. Partisanship is at its worse when there are only 2 of you, as demonstrated by the US system - it's all finger pointing and "us vs them" that just polarized everything.

In the EU there are (at least?) 7ish "major" political parties, and while some are bigger than others, many actual hold seats and power unlike the US Green and Libertarian "parties" that are essentially meaningless.

As such, any "partisanship" seems at least less extreme. It's a lot harder to crucify one bad guy when your time and attention is split between 6 "bad guys". And different parties back different things, so even if 3 were anti-abortion, you'd have to split your slander and hate to three different groups with different OTHER ideas. So it gets a bit lost in sauce.

And on the other side, if you take a strong stance on one issue (such as this one), there are likely multiple parties on your side for that issue since there are unlikely to be 7 opinions, and even if they are, the similar ones can "tag team" a little bit since they're more in line with each other than the opposing sides are.

If you've ever played video games, games with more than 2 teams play very differently than ones that are just one or the other. Dynamics are much more complicated and constantly evolving than they are in a simple "team a vs team b".

As such, my understanding is that all of these extreme takes are severely diluted since there are more shades of gray and more nuance to the conversation and not just a constant "red vs blue".

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

Currently 10 parties in the parliament making up seven fractions. For a supernational parliament the influence of nationalities is generally small, but occasionally it bleeds through.

There's actually more things that you can call parties operating on the European levels but many aren't large/successful enough to be granted party status by the parliament. E.g. Pirates generally fraction with Greens/EFA, Volt is split between Greens/EFA and Renew, roughly left-liberal vs. right-liberal, they really don't seem to be able to decide.

[-] Skua@kbin.social 8 points 10 months ago

The members of the Commission are chosen by the head of each member state, but also have to be approved by the parliament. So it's kinda like a civil servant that gets vetted by elected representatives

[-] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

It's kind of like the US Senate from before the 17th Amendment.

[-] MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

I wish our America can just start shedding our old identity and start slowly, but surely, copying Europes identity. Maybe things can change for the better.