European Majority favours more social media regulation

Scope of the survey

• Commenters stress the underlying study is only about social media, mainly:
  • Whether social media is sufficiently regulated.
  • Whether political advertising should be banned on social platforms.
• Initial framing as “tech regulation” or surveillance tech is called misleading; the poll does not address facial recognition, plate readers, or AI generally.

Far-right parties, media bias, and terminology

• The study’s finding that “far-right” voters are less supportive of bans on political ads sparks a long argument about:
  • Whether “far right” is an accurate description of parties like AfD, Le Pen’s party, VOX, etc., or just a label for views disliked by current governments.
  • Some argue these parties engage in or excuse Nazi-era revisionism and anti-constitutional positions, justifying the label.
  • Others claim mainstream institutions smear opposition as “far right” or “Nazis” and refer to current governments as “regimes,” alleging propaganda and bias in traditional media.
• One side emphasizes Europe’s historical experience with fascism and communism as a reason to treat far-right and far-left ideas as dangerous; the other claims these warnings are weaponized to delegitimize dissent.

Regulation vs. censorship

• Disagreement over whether “social media regulation” inherently equals censorship:
  • One camp says any restriction on what can be published is censorship by definition.
  • Others distinguish structural rules (e.g., mandatory chronological feeds, age limits) from content-based suppression.
  • Paradox of Tolerance and “defensive democracy” are invoked to justify limiting platforms that host extremist or foreign influence operations.
  • Critics counter that bans and blocking are authoritarian and that the real defense is education and a healthy society.

Age, usage, and attitudes

• Some suspect older people dominate surveys and are more “pro-censorship”; others cite German data suggesting support for stricter regulation is broad across age groups.
• Observations that young users both heavily use social media and often report wanting less of it; ambivalence framed as a control/sanity issue more than classic free-speech politics.

Platforms, propaganda, and proposed policies

• Strong hostility toward X and Meta from some, who see them as vectors of far-right propaganda and foreign (including Russian and American) information warfare; others defend X as “truth-first” or warn that platform bans are undemocratic.
• Suggested interventions:
  • Age verification and gambling-style limits (blackout periods, usage caps, one-account rules, self-exclusion).
  • A paid tier with powerful personal filters; possibly banning “free” tiers.
  • Identity-verified but pseudonymous posting via escrow, to deter bots and trolls while preserving conditional anonymity.
• A few commenters argue most “social media speech” is really commercial or political product and should be regulated like other advertising media.