“The point was to prevent situations where one of the Law and Justice MPs – although one of them leads the way, there are many of them – posts fake information, false content prepared by artificial intelligence. People no longer know what is true and what is false,” this is how Dariusz Joński, an MEP from the Civic Coalition, spoke about the law implementing the Digital Services Act that was vetoed by the president. The governing camp’s narrative about the “protection of children online” has therefore collapsed.
The president vetoed the law on online censorship
On Friday, the Chancellery of the President announced that President Karol Nawrocki had vetoed the law implementing the Digital Services Act, dubbed “ACTA 3”. According to President Nawrocki, the harmful provision lies in handing control over content regulation to an official subordinate to the government rather than to independent courts. These concerns had already been raised during the legislative process, but were not taken into account.
President Karol Nawrocki, explaining his veto, stated that the law implementing the DSA – the EU regulation on digital services – was only ostensibly intended to protect citizens, especially children.
However, as the head of state explained, the solutions proposed in the law create a system in which citizens would have to fight the bureaucratic apparatus in order to defend their right to express opinions. He stressed: “There can be no consent to that. (…) As president, I cannot sign a law that in practice amounts to administrative censorship.”
Joński said too much?
Those in power were not pleased with the president’s decision. Representatives of the governing coalition adopted a narrative according to which Karol Nawrocki’s veto of the DSA “hits children and young people”.
Nevertheless, Dariusz Joński, an MEP from the Civic Coalition, revealed the true intention behind the provisions of the vetoed law.
“The point was to prevent situations where one of the Law and Justice (PiS) MPs – although one of them leads the way, there are many of them – posts fake information, false content prepared by artificial intelligence. People no longer know what is true and what is false. In my opinion, all of this was for that reason – and PiS politicians wanted it not to pass – so they could continue spreading this disinformation and win the elections next year,” he said in an interview with Radio ZET.
Asked whether this also meant that the provisions were intended to apply to political activity and against the opposition, he continued:
“If you want to create various images using artificial intelligence – OK. But let it be labelled as produced by AI. Because people really do not know today what is fake and what is not fake, what is true and what is a lie, what is produced by AI. We wanted it to be that way.”
“This entire law is also about one more thing. When we talk about freedom of speech – exactly. If anyone writes an opinion, here in Poland it is not decided whether it will be published on social media platforms by people, but by an algorithm written in the United States,” Joński pressed on.
“We wanted that – if someone writes something – they could appeal to an office. The office could check it, and a court would decide whether yes or no. So that we would have any control over what is happening on these social media platforms. And this has no significance and has no impact on censorship. The point is to have freedom of speech. But at the same time, to control what reaches children,” he said, without referring back to his earlier statement.