News Round-Up: EU Launches Probe Into Musk's X, Rapist Men Labelled Women by British Police and CO2's Effect on Temperature
News Round-Up: EU Launches Probe Into Musk's X, Rapist Men Labelled Women by British Police and CO2's Effect on Temperature
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
The EU has opened the first "illegal content" probe against X under the DSA.
Study: man-made CO2 emissions do not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in temperature fluctuations.
UK police have labelled hundreds of male rapists as women.
Scientist: it was a very low wildfire year for the Western US.
Hundreds of Canadians have been de-banked because of their views.
The EU has opened the first "illegal content" probe against X under the DSA
The European Union (EU) has launched an investigation into Elon Musk's social media platform X for disseminating so-called illegal content and disinformation on the platform, the Financial Times writes. The probe follows the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last Saturday, when Palestinian extremist group Hamas brutally attacked and killed Israeli civilians. Israel responded with large-scale military action and indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian areas, which resulted in a large number of casualties.
In light of these events, the EU accuses X of spreading misinformation, as well as terrorist and violent content on the platform. This is the first EU investigation into a major social media platform launched following the adoption of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in August this year. Under the DSA, large media platforms such as X, Facebook, and others are required to swiftly remove content deemed illegal, and if they fail to do so, the companies that host them could face hefty fines – up to 6% of the company's global turnover – or face closure in the EU.
Most people would probably agree that genuinely dangerous content, such as calls for acts of terrorism and violence, should be prevented. But we should be wary of the wider context of this particular investigation and the finger-pointing at X that preceded it. We have previously written that top European politicians, led by European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton, have long warned X that if they do not step up their actions countering mis- and disinformation, they will be dealt with. For example, in May, when the then Twitter-branded platform decided to leave the EU's voluntary agreement of countering disinformation, Breton said, referring to the imminent entry into force of the DSA: "Obligations remain. You can run but you can’t hide. Our teams are ready for enforcement."
However, the current investigation was preceded by two warning letters signed by Breton, one addressed to Musk and the other to Mark Zuckerberg, whose Meta Group owns the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.
While the letter sent to Musk referred only to Hamas and Israel and reminded him that the DSA lays down strict rules on how to respond and behave in the event of 'illegal content' being reported, the letter addressed to Zuckerberg a day later was even broader in scope. In addition to the Israel-related issues, Breton drew Zuckerberg's attention to the fact that there was disinformation floating around on the platform related to elections in various EU member states. As an example, Breton pointed to the recent Slovak elections, where he said that Meta had, for example, improved the so-called fact-checking and related activities, but there were also shortcomings. "We have also been made aware of reports of a significant number of deep fakes and manipulated content which circulated on your platforms and a few still appear online," Breton wrote. "I invite you to inform my team without delay on the details of the measures you have taken to mitigate such deepfakes, also in the light of upcoming elections in Poland, The Netherlands, Lithuania, Belgium, Croatia, Romania, Austria, and the European Parliament Elections," Breton insisted.
He gave both Musk and Zuckerberg 24 hours to respond. Musk responded to such a letter by saying that their company's policy is that everything is open source and transparent. "An approach that I know the EU supports. Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them. Merci beaucoup," he said.
"You are well aware of your users’ — and authorities’— reports on fake content and glorification of violence. Up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk," Breton replied.
Study: man-made CO2 emissions do not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in temperature fluctuations
Statistics Norway has published a study on its website that tries to find out how much of an impact greenhouse gases have on temperatures. The authors of the study – Statistics Norway researcher John K. Dagsvik and engineer Sigmund H. Moen – explain that weather and temperatures vary in ways that are difficult to explain and predict accurately. "There is apparently a high degree of consensus among many climate researchers that the temperature increase of the last decades is systematic (and partly man-made)," they write, adding that this is certainly the impression conveyed by mass media. However, they say, it is very difficult to obtain a comprehensive picture of the research in this field, and it is almost impossible to obtain an overview and understanding of the scientific basis for such a consensus. "By looking at these issues in more detail, this article reviews past observed and reconstructed temperature data as well as properties and tests of the global climate models," the authors write. They add that, according to global climate models, most of the warming since 1950 has been caused by human activity, but it is also known that there have been large climatic variations historically. "Temperature reconstructions indicate that there is a ‘warming’ trend that seems to have been going on for as long as approximately 400 years. Prior to the last 250 years or so, such a trend could only be due to natural causes," the authors write.
By studying reconstructions of temperatures in the distant past, they go back thousands and even hundreds of thousands of years and explain that we are now living in the interglacial period. "The preceding four interglacial periods are seen at about 125,000, 280,000, 325,000, and 415,000 years before now, with much longer glacial periods in between. All four previous interglacial periods are seen to be warmer than the present," they write.
According to their data, there have also been warmer periods than the present one in the last 4,000 years. "These data indicate that warmer temperatures were the norm in the earlier part of the past 4,000 years, including century-long intervals nearly 1°C warmer than the decade (of 2001-2010)," the authors write.
The authors conclude that even if recent recorded temperature variations should turn out to deviate from previous variation patterns in a systematic way, it is still a difficult challenge to establish how much of this change is due to increasing man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. "The effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be sufficiently strong to cause systematic changes in the pattern of temperature fluctuations. In other words, our analysis indicates that with the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2," the authors write.
UK police have labelled hundreds of male rapists as women
Over the past four years, police forces have referred 260 cases to the Crown Prosecution Service in which the perpetrator was actually a man, but chose to identify himself as a woman and was thus recorded as one in the official documents, The Telegraph reports. In a further 209 cases, the police have indicated that the sex of the person is not known – this includes, for example, those who claim to be non-binary, i.e. neither male nor female.
The situation is all the more incomprehensible because, in fact, last year Britain's Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, told the police that it was wrong to label men suspected of rape as women. Instead, she advised them to retain common sense in defining a person's gender. Earlier this year, the minister also said that in no case was it biologically or legally correct to describe a rapist as a woman. "Not only is that wrong because a woman cannot legally be a rapist, but also it’s grossly insensitive and insulting to the victims of rape who are biological women," she said. Indeed, under British law, rape can only be committed by a man. As well as being insulting and demeaning to victims of sexual violence, calling a male rapist a woman has the practical consequences of creating confusion, as the data becomes useless in the fight against crime and can no longer be used as a basis for social risk assessment.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government has taken other steps as well to end this confusion over gender identity. For example, in last week's news round-up, we wrote that special treatment for men who consider themselves women in the medical system would come to an end, meaning that hospital wards for women, for example, would remain exclusively for women. At last week's Conservative conference, Sunak also touched upon the topic in his speech and said that such gender ideology where everyone chooses their gender according to their feelings, should not be imposed in education or the medical system. "We shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t. A man is a man and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense," he said.
Scientist: it was a very low wildfire year for the Western US
In his blog, US atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass writes of the good news that this year has been a very quiet one in terms of wildfires, at least in the United States, with the extent of the burned area being the lowest since 2000. The researcher who lives in the state of Washington notes that there were no active wildfires in his home state by early October. Being well into October and with very wet weather systems approaching, Mass is confident that most wildfire activity is over this year over the Northwest U.S.
According to Mass, longer-term graphs also offer little evidence that wildfires are expanding. Over the past decade, he points out, the area of wildfires varies widely. For example, in the state of California, where fires are a major problem, this year's fire acreage was the smallest in the last decade, while remaining at the same level as last year. Mass also says that the proportion of particulate and smoke levels in the air has also decreased over the past five years, so the situation has improved.
However, he adds, if you follow the media and some activist groups, it may seem that the risk of fires is rapidly getting worse and that global warming is the reason. "You should not be surprised that the wildfire threat has stayed tame over the last few years and probably won't accelerate during the years ahead," he says.
For one thing, global warming is fairly modest, he points out – in the western United States it has been 1.1 degrees over the past half century, and precipitation has changed very little over the same period. According to Mass, these changes are not enough to increase fire risks significantly in real terms. Mass also points out that the risk of new fires is lower in areas that have already burned, and that a large proportion of fires in the western United States have been caused by electrical infrastructure failures. Most power companies have now improved the condition of the lines, and in the event of high winds, power is turned off for fear of major damage. Forest management has also been taken more seriously, Mass said, which also reduces the chance of catastrophic fires.
"The bottom line is that all the scary talk about rapidly rising wildfire threats in our future is really not based on solid facts, and reality is going a different way," Mass adds.
Hundreds of Canadians have been de-banked because of their views
Since 2018, Canadian banks and other financial service providers have de-banked more than 800 Canadian citizens, Reclaim The Net writes, pointing to a recent investigation on the matter. Among the individuals who have been persecuted in this way are many who took part in Canada's protests against vaccine coercion and inhumane Covid restrictions in early 2022, known as the Freedom Convoy.
More specifically, 267 bank accounts and 170 cryptocurrency wallets were closed in connection with the Freedom Convoy. It is estimated that the Canadian government confiscated 7.8 million Canadian dollars (5.4 million euros) in this way.
It has also been revealed that banks were given lists of individuals by the police and were advised to close their accounts, as they did.
For such ideological reasons, 837 people have been de-banked in Canada over the last five years.