Last year Danny Mekić wrote this article : https://dannymekic.com/202310/undermining-democracy-the-european-commissions-controversial-push-for-digital-surveillance which was published in a newspaper and then the author got shadow-banned on X. Today the same Dutch newspaper reported that Mekić won two court-cases about this.
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Dutch article about the verdict - paywall : https://www.volkskrant.nl/tech/x-mag-gebruikers-niet-meer-zomaar-shadowbannen-oordeelt-amsterdamse-rechter~befb7fd0/
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Archived copy : https://archive.ph/ckW2a
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tl;dr English translation :
X is not allowed to shadow-ban users easily the judge said. Only during the court-case X explained why the account of Meki was shadow-banned : He had shared an article about the CSAM law on X. “I still
do not understand why X this only said in the court hall, rather than telling me right away when I
asked about it” Mekić said.
- Mekić on Mastodon : https://mastodon.social/@DannyMekic
- The author’s username on X : DannyMekic
- Article from last year by WIRED : https://www.wired.com/story/csar-chat-scan-proposal-european-commission-ads/
In the newspaper example, these are not newspaper employees having their content rejected, but readers or other random members of the public.
Except that’s not the situation. They don’t have a monopoly, people can use other platforms (like we’re doing right now). And it looks like users and advertisers are abandoning twitter, that free choice mechanism is working.
Reddit had an average of 73.1 million daily active users in late 2023 and all of Lemmy has just under 50,000 monthly active users as of this month. Lemmy is a roadside lemonade stand trying to compete with Minute Maid. Big Tech has a monopoly on social media.