Should Hungary or the EU regulate the Internet or social media platforms like Facebook?

Remarks by Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi:

The fundamental rules and norms of social interactions must have been defined by the earliest prehistoric communities. We know this for a fact since no human community can function without such rules. Throughout history, our societies have always strived to lay out the key elements of these norms of cooperation and behaviour in a written, legal form. These customs and rules belong to the most important elements of human civilizations while their potential variances form the lines of separation among the different cultures.

Ever since the spread of the Internet, there has been an ongoing debate on how the regulation of digital platforms should relate to the customary norms of “real life”.

Do we need any regulation at all? The issue has become ever more pressing recently.

At the dawn of the Internet, access to the world wide web was limited to a relatively small group of individuals who, due to their socialization, already had certain common norms and ideas about online activities, but this situation has changed fundamentally since then. First, the Internet has become a commonly used cross-generational and cross-cultural platform and second, the appearance of social media has raised online interactivity to a whole new level. These trends were just further intensified by the pandemic lockdowns that forced such masses of people in front of the screens who would probably have been lost for the digital world otherwise.

Where so many people, so many opinions and so many news items appear day by day, real emergency situations can easily occur if there are no regulations in place. The 2000s showed us the kind of room the Internet could give to the freedom of speech and social dialogue, while

the 2010s revealed the unfortunate truth that the Internet grants nearly unlimited space for extremist ideologies, too.

Furthermore, it also became clear that highly dangerous groups and echo chambers can be formed even in America or elsewhere in the developed world, and not only in the Middle East that already struggles with severe societal problems.

In that regard, it’s enough to remember the extremely intense atmosphere of the American presidential election, or the siege of the US Capitol.

Of course, populist politicians have already taken notice of these trends. In fact, they were the first to leverage the opportunities offered by Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. And now,

the populist politicians who have already secured a firm grip on power in their own countries, are raising the issue of regulating social media and the Internet more and more frequently.

As the latest example, Hungary’s increasingly dictatorial governing party Fidesz has just announced that they will adopt a law to regulate tech companies. Of course, we have no doubt what their real intentions are under the usual populist messages about the rights of the people: what they really want is to provide legal protection for the government’s now business-as-usual hate speech and smear campaigns as well as for sabotaging the work of the opposition.