How revealed writer in Poland.pl Simon Szereda, Sejm website, on which comments and opinions on draft laws can be published, has been censored in an utmost left-wing spirit. Service for the alleged public consultation of planned changes to the law, He openly censors the statements of Poles, attributing their statements to racist connotations and sowing the alleged "hate" speech.
A scandal on the government public consultation site. Participants in the task opinion process alert about possible censorship on the seismic consultation platform. As they point out, the website of opinion.sejm.gov.pl is to automatically block answers containing circumstantial phrases, qualifying them as “a hatred speech”.
According to the objections raised, the problem concerns, among others, the usage of the word "banderism" which, as the net users claim, results in rejection of responses in consultation surveys. This is intended to give emergence to peculiar controversy in the context of the presidential bill providing for the penalisation of flagism and aligning this ideology with Nazism and communism.
‘The very usage of the word “banderism” in the survey is already qualified by the Sejm as “a speech of hatred”. It's peculiarly outrageous due to the fact that it's the presidential issue. a bill which is intended to penalize flagism (anti-Polish Ukrainian nationalism) and align it with Nazism and communism. Thus, the Sejm's organization censors citizens for utilizing the concept of ideology, which the president of the Republic of Poland wants to rightly prohibit.” – wrote on X Szeda.
Critics introduced on the solution page point to the contradiction between the intent of the bill and the practice of the consultation platform. In their view, the blocking of the notion of "banderism" which the State itself intends to impose by law undermines public consultation and limits the real participation of citizens in the legislative process.
"If, in the process of giving an opinion on the bill, the name of the ideology to be regulated cannot be used, it is hard to talk of real social dialogue" — the authors of critical comments raise.
The allegations are besides directed at the Chancellery of the Sejm, which is liable for the functioning of the platform. In the opinion of any citizens, content moderation mechanisms may effectively restrict freedom of expression under procedures defined as democratic.
At the moment, there is no authoritative position of the Chancellery of the Sejm explaining the criteria for qualifying certain wordings as “hate speech” and the rules of operation of automatic content filters. However, the issue raises increasing public interest and raises questions about transparency and credibility of the public consultation process in Poland.
"If, in the supposedly "democratic" legislative process, the ideology to be banned by law is not even to be named by name, we are dealing with a fiction of dialog and a real closure of the mouth of citizens by the Sejm authorities" – concluded Szered.
Interestingly, in comments under his entry appeared other examples the same kind of censorship, cultivated by a seismic service.
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