And from time to time you will have visible contests between those with different types of power. The job of law and politics is then to regulate such contests so as to ensure that tensions do not harden into the contradictions that undermine the health of a polity.
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These contests of power, when they happen, are fascinating.
Over at Prospect I have written a post about one such contest: the European Commission v X.
The latter has considerable media power: so much so that the content of its platform can often have a considerable real-world impact.
But the former also has considerable power – in the formulation of the laws that apply to the platform in the European Union and in the application of those laws in particular circumstances.
It is quite the stand-off.
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When the European Commissioner responsible for the Single Market tweeted a letter last week, it reminded me of an earlier stand-off.
It evoked the stand-off in 1930-31 between the then government of the United Kingdom and the then popular press over tariff reform and imperial preference (the Brexit issue of its day).
That was a stand-off which, at least in the short-term, the government won.
(Tariffs were introduced later in the 1930s, though not directly because of media pressure.)
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Often these tensions are hidden and managed out of public view, and so it is always interesting – and instructive – when they are done in public.
Something is up.
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Musk certainly won’t shrink from this confrontation. He’s also got his advertising boycott legal case on the go. I can’t see him winning either. The advertising case will be embarrassing for him but losing to the EU will hit him hard in the pocket.
The most worrying thing is it will push him further to the extreme right. The Internet used to be run by liberals who pushed for freedom of information over profit. It could become the source of economic pressure towards ever increasing profit through exploitation, concentrating wealth even more.
The Sovereign Individual vs the Meta-State. Fascinating. Personally, given that his capability in engineering and system design is way in advance of his politics, I wish that Mr Musk would learn his politics in smaller sandboxes. But the serious questions relate to what triggers further action from the CEC, and what will it be?
On the contrary, I would say it was his politics that led Musk to buy Twitter in the first place. He isn’t really an engineer either. He has the funds to pay others to make changes to his products. He hasn’t really changed how Twitter works. He sacked a large number of employees to save money, overstressing its moderation capabilities. He got rid of the system verifying prominent accounts, opening up blue ticks to anyone willing to pay for one. And he readmitted banned user accounts, giving them more freedom than ever to spread their hate.
Baldwin’s “power without responsibility” claim has always troubled me: does anyone today think it’s true?
Indeed it does trouble me also. But to whom were you referring as holding the power? Musk or EU? Or both?
As much as I dislike Musk, one underlying issue here is the idea that, if the contents of a website are available in a place, that gives the authorities in that place jurisdiction over that website. If you really accept that logic, then, if a website is available in China, that gives the Chinese government jurisdiction over it, and, if a website is available in Utah, that gives the State of Utah jurisdiction over it. And I don’t like that idea at all.
What the EU is doing is telling X that information designed to create racist hatred must be taken down or he will be fined. The UK has given itself similar powers.
The alternative is the anything goes approach to Internet publishing. All very well to begin with, but now companies are controlled by immensely powerful and influential individuals, is another thing altogether.
The website orginator always has the option of making the website unobtainable in that place. I don’t think that a web-site differs from any other publisher, e.g. a newspaper, nor do I see why it should.