The Prime Minister says she does not want censorship of social networks, but she misses the reaction to lies

“There are a lot of discussions, including with the heads of social networks, who always say in the discussions that they are kind of fighting against these negative phenomena, but of course each of us has our own opinion about it. Because we see how easily any information related to the war in Ukraine that exposes, say, Russian atrocities or things like that is sometimes blocked, and how sometimes it takes a long time for information that is obvious to disappear fakes (fake) and which should be removed very soon,” she said.

This is how the Prime Minister commented on the reports of the disinformation analysis center Debunk.org about the disinformation attack that started in the Baltic States and Poland at the beginning of the year and is continuing to spread, which aims to extort money from the population by using well-known public figures – from representatives of the entertainment world to athletes, politicians and even Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Polish prime ministers or presidents.

I. Šimonytė pointed out that it is not about cases where the reputation of politicians or other famous people is harmed, but when they are used, they try to harm the users of social networks.

“On the one hand, we don’t want it to be censorship, because some of us have lived in censorship and know what it looks like, when content is edited and people are not allowed to express their opinion, but on the other hand, a lie is not an opinion, misleading people is a crime, let’s say , or organizing some kind of anti-Semitic, homophobic, or other attacks through social platforms is also a crime,” the head of the government emphasized.

According to I.Šimonytė, the states will need to find “some other ways of interaction” with the big social platforms. She emphasized that such coordination should also take place through the institutions of the European Union.

“I think this will be one of the very important issues in the European Parliament elections as well,” she said.