Malta’s strong economy

Who would have believed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic early in 2020, that in April 2022 when the pandemic still existed – although its effect is much less now due to the excellent way our government has managed the pandemic – investment in our country’s economy would be 10 per cent higher than it was in 2019?

Unfortunately, there are among us people like Godfrey Leone Ganado and his PN ilk, who are greatly disappointed that instead of seeing Malta’s economy going bust with the resultant consequences, such as sky-high unemployment, daily anti-government street-protests etc., Malta’s economy is considered as the best-performing economy in the whole EU.

The great majority of Maltese and Gozitan voters knew perfectly well what they were doing when voting on March 26.

Eddy Privitera – Mosta

Freedom and networks

Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter will have to adapt to European laws. The debate over the limits of freedom on social networks returns to the foreground after the purchase of Twitter by Musk, the richest man in the world, for $43,000 million (about €41,000 million). Musk says his goal is to restore free speech on the social network.

In the same week, the European Union has agreed to a pioneering Digital Services Directive around the world to regulate digital activity and clean up a media ecosystem dominated by US giants. Brussels seeks to protect citizens from the manipulation of algorithms, the harassment of armies of mercenary accounts and the disinformation that contaminates public debate.

Twitter headquarters in downtown San Francisco. Photo: Amy Osborne/AFP

Among the measures it envisages is the rapid removal of illegal content. The fines can reach up to six per cent of global revenue for companies such as Amazon, Facebook or Google. It aspires to also regulate internet providers, domain registration companies or cloud storage services.

Musk declares himself a supporter of “absolute freedom of speech”. Two of the main promoters of the directive, the French Minister of Digital Affairs, Cédric O, and the head of the European Internal Market, Thierry Breton, have warned that, in the EU, Twitter will be subject to the new law, “regardless of the ideology of its owner” and that “it will have to adapt to regulations that do not exist in the US”.

Human Rights Watch also reminded Musk that “freedom of expression is not an absolute right, so Twitter must invest in efforts to keep its most vulnerable users safe on the platform”. It is tantamount to saying that there is no absolute freedom of expression that at the same time hijacks the freedoms of others, for example, through the harassment of a digital mob or an organised campaign of discredit.

Companies like Twitter promote some content against others through private rules that are only sometimes questioned, such as the veto of Donald Trump, in January 2021, when his massive disinformation campaign to reverse the elections led to the assault on the US Congress. The decisions that allow that use of the platform to be made again cannot depend on Musk, nor on a government, but on legislation that recognises this reality and is designed for it.

It has been the European commissioner Breton who has emphasised that “the law will be very clear, much clearer now in Europe than in the US”, and with rules subject to democratic control to decide or not the banishment of a user from a platform.

Philip Micallef, former chairperson Malta Communications Authority and chief executive Bermuda Regulatory Authority – Attard

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