Monthly Archives: June 2021

The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a standoff with social media companies over what content gets investigated or blocked online, and who gets to decide. Bikas Das/AP hide caption

The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a standoff with social media companies over what content gets investigated or blocked online, and who gets to decide.

MUMBAI AND SAN FRANCISCO One night last month, police crowded into the lobby of Twitter's offices in India's capital New Delhi. They were from an elite squad that normally investigates terrorism and organized crime, and said they were trying to deliver a notice alerting Twitter to misinformation allegedly tweeted by opposition politicians.

But they arrived at 8 p.m. And Twitter's offices were closed anyway, under a coronavirus lockdown. It's unclear if they ever managed to deliver their notice. They released video of their raid afterward to Indian TV channels and footage shows them negotiating with security guards in the lobby.

The May 24 police raid which Twitter later called an "intimidation tactic" was one of the latest salvos in a confrontation between the Indian government and social media companies over what online content gets investigated or blocked, and who gets to decide.

While the Indian constitution includes the right to freedom of speech, it also bans expression or publication of anything that risks India's security, public order or "decency." But the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has introduced a long list of new IT rules going beyond this. They require social media platforms to warn users not to post anything that's defamatory, obscene, invasive of someone else's privacy, encouraging of gambling, harmful to a child or "patently false or misleading" among other things.

If the government orders it, platforms are required to take down such material. The rules also require platforms to identify the original source of information that's shared online or, in the case of messaging apps, forwarded among users. Company executives can be held criminally liable if the platforms don't comply.

Many tech companies are aghast. They say these rules violate their users' freedom of expression and privacy, and amount to censorship. Free speech advocates warn that such rules are prone to politicization and could be used to target government critics.

India's Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad (left) and Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar announce new regulations for social media companies and streaming websites in New Delhi in February. India's government has warned Twitter to comply with the country's new social media regulations, which critics say give the government more power to police online content. Manish Swarup/AP hide caption

India's Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad (left) and Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar announce new regulations for social media companies and streaming websites in New Delhi in February. India's government has warned Twitter to comply with the country's new social media regulations, which critics say give the government more power to police online content.

But India with nearly 1.4 billion people is one of the tech companies' biggest markets. The country's hundreds of millions of internet users present a ripe business opportunity for companies such as Twitter and Facebook, especially since they're banned from operating in China.

And India's government like others around the world knows this, says Jason Pielemeier, policy and strategy director at the Global Network Initiative, a coalition of tech companies and other groups supporting free expression online.

"Over time, the governments have become more and more sophisticated in terms of their understanding of the pressure points that large internet companies have and are sensitive to," he says. "Those companies have also, to some extent, become more sensitive as they have increased the revenue that they generate in markets all around the world. And so where you see companies having large user bases and governments increasingly dissatisfied with those companies' responsiveness, we tend to see situations like the one that is currently flaring up in India."

Some companies, including Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, have reportedly complied, at least partially, with the new rules, which took effect May 25. Others are lobbying for changes. Twitter says it's "making every effort to comply" but has asked for an extension to do so. WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, has sued the Indian government.

The police raid last month on Twitter's offices in New Delhi came amid squabbles between India's two biggest political parties, accusing each other of spreading misinformation.

Politicians from Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, had been tweeting screenshots of what they claimed was a "media toolkit" used by their main rival, the Indian National Congress party, to amplify online complaints about Modi's handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Twitter's rules about platform manipulation prohibit users from "artificially amplifying" messages.

But the screenshot BJP politicians were tweeting of this alleged "toolkit" was fake. Some of India's most reputable fact-checkers concluded it was a forgery. After its own investigation, Twitter slapped a "manipulated media" label on those tweets by BJP politicians.

The government then asked Twitter to remove that label. Twitter did not. Police raided its offices three days later.

"We, alongside many in civil society in India and around the world, have concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global Terms of Service, as well as with core elements of the new IT Rules," a Twitter spokesperson wrote in a statement emailed May 27 to NPR and other news organizations.

To many observers, it looked like the Indian government was trying to drag Twitter publicly into a dispute between rival political parties, by sending the police to serve Twitter executives with a notice that could have been sent electronically especially during the pandemic.

"Serving a notice of that kind, in the form that played out, just confirms the idea that this is just theater," said Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and founder of India's Software Freedom Law Center.

Choudhary says the optics are troubling. It looks like the Indian government has rewritten the country's IT rules to endow itself with extraordinary powers to silence its critics online. In February, on orders from the Indian government, Twitter blocked more than 500 accounts but then reversed course when it realized many belonged to journalists, opposition politicians and activists.

More recently, the Indian government demanded that social media companies remove news articles or posts referring to the B.1.617 coronavirus variant as the "Indian variant." (The WHO has since renamed this variant, which was first identified in India, as "Delta").

"The government has been trying to either block handles or curb dissent," Choudhary says. "Both the government and [social media] companies are claiming they're protecting users, when it's convenient for them, but users are really the ones left without much power."

Modi's government published its new IT rules on Feb. 25 and gave social media companies three months to comply. So the rules took effect May 25. Twitter is asking for another three-month extension.

"We will strive to comply with applicable law in India. But, just as we do around the world, we will continue to be strictly guided by principles of transparency, a commitment to empowering every voice on the service, and protecting freedom of expression and privacy under the rule of law," a Twitter spokesperson said in the May 27 statement.

One of the requirements Twitter finds most onerous is that it name an India-based chief compliance officer who would be criminally liable for content on the platform. The company says it's worried about its employees in that situation.

Indian government officials say Twitter has already had three months to comply with this and the rest of the requirements.

"You are a giant, earning billions of dollars globally! You can't find a technological solution?" India's IT minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, recently said on India's CNN-News18 channel.

Prasad acknowledged that India's social media rules might be more onerous than what tech companies are used to in the United States. But India is a place where mob violence has erupted over rumors shared on social media. The government needs to take extra precautions, he said. And big tech companies could comply with these rules, he insisted, if they really wanted to.

"The same Twitter and social media companies are complying with all the requirements in America! In Australia! In Canada! In England!" Prasad said. "But when it comes to India, they have a double standard."

Tech executives have been grilled about misinformation by members of the U.S. Congress. But when India summons them, they often don't show up. Choudhary says this has fueled anger among Indian politicians, who fume that they're not taken seriously.

"The companies say, 'Our servers are in California. So we don't have this information.' Or, 'We can't come and talk to you,'" she says. "That gives the government justification to say, 'How can you monetize our users, but when we want to have a discussion with you, you claim you're only a sales office?'"

India has reason to be sensitive to the threat of being taken advantage of by foreign powers. It has a colonial past. Even before Great Britain ruled India, a foreign corporation, the East India Company, pillaged it for centuries.

Choudhary calls what big tech companies are doing in India "digital colonialism."

"It's now the Silicon Valley 'bros' who think they can tell us what to do and what not to do," Choudhary says.

In a particularly harshly worded statement issued May 27, the Indian government called Twitter a "private, for-profit, foreign entity" that needs to "stop beating around the bush and comply with the laws of the land." It accused Twitter of "seek[ing] to undermine India's legal system" and blamed the company for what it called "rampant proliferation of fake and harmful content against India."

Last weekend, the Indian government appeared to reject Twitter's request for an extension. It sent the company what it called "one final notice" as a "gesture of goodwill," urging the tech giant to comply with the new social media rules. The government warned of "unintended consequences" if Twitter refuses to comply.

Nigeria's government recently banned Twitter after the company took down a tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari that appeared to threaten separatists. There are fears that India could do the same.

For Twitter, that would be a blow not just to its business interests, but to its avowed commitment to fostering public conversation.

"As much as these kinds of centralized corporate platforms can be frustrating in a number of ways, they are, when it comes down to it, the place where the majority of the world interacts," says Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"Years ago, I would have said that companies should stand up to authoritarian governments to tell them, 'Hey, block us if you want to, but we're not going to comply with these restrictions,'" she says. "But as time has gone on, that's become less and less of a viable option. ... For some people, these are really vital channels for accessing a global audience, for reaching people outside of their normal space, especially during the pandemic."

In India, for example, people took to Twitter to source medical supplies and raise money during a devastating COVID-19 resurgence.

On Monday, a Twitter spokesperson told NPR that the company remains "deeply committed to India," has been "making every effort to comply" with the new IT rules and has been sharing its progress with the Indian government.

The same day, Twitter also disclosed to a Harvard University database that it had restricted access within India to four accounts including those of a hip-hop artist and a singer/songwriter that had criticized the Modi government online. To comply with Indian law, Twitter sometimes blocks content in India but allows it to remain visible outside the country.

Twitter and other companies face pressure from other governments too. Around the world, free speech advocates say, there are increasing demands to restrict certain types of speech and for governments to play a greater role in regulating online platforms.

Germany, for example, has a law requiring social media platforms to act quickly to take down illegal speech or face financial penalties.

In the U.S., Democrats are pushing companies to curb misinformation, while Republicans have turned their own complaints about social media censorship into laws like one passed in Florida last month that bars platforms from banning politicians.

Another part of the showdown between India's government and tech companies hinges on privacy.

The government wants to be able to trace misinformation that's shared online. So as part of its new IT rules, it's asking social media companies to be able to identify the "first originator" of any piece of information. It says it will ask for that information only in rare cases where a potential crime is suspected to have been committed.

WhatsApp filed a lawsuit over this last month in the Delhi High Court. The company says it's unable to provide "first originator" information unless it traces every message on its platform which would amount to what it called "a new form of mass surveillance."

"To comply, messaging services would have to keep giant databases of every message you send or add a permanent identity stamp like a fingerprint to private messages with friends, family, colleagues, doctors, and businesses," WhatsApp wrote in an FAQ about traceability on its website. "Companies would be collecting more information about their users at a time when people want companies to have less information about them."

Experts say messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal would likely have to break their end-to-end encryption which ensures only the sender and recipient, not the company or anyone else, can read a message to comply with Indian law. Namrata Maheshwari, an India-based lawyer and policy consultant for the Center for Democracy and Technology, predicts that will have a "chilling effect" on free speech.

"This is problematic for users' right to privacy, because the core promise of end-to-end encryption is that users can communicate safely and securely without any unauthorized access by any third party, including the service provider," she says.

Maheshwari says the WhatsApp lawsuit is one of many filed in various high courts across India challenging India's new IT rules. They bring a key third party judges into the ongoing standoff between the Indian government and social media companies. The lawsuits will be decided over several months, or even years.

"As far as the question of who the stronger entity here is, I actually think it's now the Indian courts," she says. "The battleground has moved."

Editor's note: Facebook, Google and LinkedIn are among NPR's financial supporters.

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India And Tech Companies Clash Over Censorship, Privacy And 'Digital Colonialism' - NPR

Twitter declared a free and open Internet to be "an essential human right in modern society" Saturday morning after the Nigerian government banned access to the social media giant following a dispute with its president even as critics say it suppresses conservative content and bans its own users.

Twitter deleted a fiery tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari that many perceived as a veiled threat against violent separatists in the nations southeast then his governments information wing responded by banning the social media platform from the country.

ETHIOPIAS AMHARA ETHNIC GROUP ACCUSES BIDEN OF IGNORING ATROCITIES

"The Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria," the countrys Federal Ministry of Information and Culture tweeted Friday night.

Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Nigerias Minister of Information and Culture, also announced that the government would begin licensing social media platforms and "OTT," or over-the-top, operations, which offer content directly to viewers via the internet.

"We are deeply concerned by the blocking of Twitter in Nigeria," Twitters Public Policy division tweeted in response. "Access to the free and #OpenInternet is an essential human right in modern society. We will work to restore access for all those in Nigeria who rely on Twitter to communicate and connect with the world. #KeepitOn."

The declaration immediately drew responses from Twitter users who noted that the social media giants own policies allow for suspending and banning users including former President Donald Trump.

"Access to the free & #OpenInternet is an essential human right in modern society... unless youre Donald Trump. Or reporting on Hunter Bidens laptop. Or discussing the biology of gender. Or the murderous dictator of Iran. Or a Chinese Communist Party peon lying about COVID," conservative author Liz Wheeler wrote in response to Twitters tweet.

Another user tweeted the meme of a comic book hero sweating over which button to choose "Access to Twitter is a human right," or "Ban these accounts for saying things I don't like."

Several other users weighed in with similar sentiments.

The company has also been accused by Republican lawmakers of "shadow-banning" conservatives, or using an algorithm that suppresses the visibility of their tweets.

Twitter also restricted the New York Post's account over a story about Hunter Biden just days before the 2020 presidential election, then backtracked after the story checked out.

PRO-IRAN TWITTER ACCOUNTS GOT ANTI-SEMITIC HATE TRENDING AMID ISRAELI-HAMAS ESCALATION

And yet FOX Business reported last month that a network of pro-Iran Twitter accounts got numerous anti-Semitic hashtags trending as violence between Israel and Hamas broke out at its highest levels since 2014.

Twitter Headquarters building in San Francisco (iStock)

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Buharis deleted tweet came in response to arson attacks on government offices and police stations and appeared to threaten ethnic Igbo militants believed to be behind them.

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"Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War," he wrote in the now-deleted tweet. "Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand."

The Nigerian president was a military officer in the fight against Igbo separatists who wanted to establish an independent Biafra nation in the countrys bloody civil war. More than 1 million people died in the conflict between 1967 and 1970.

Twitter rules prohibit tweets promoting or threatening violence.

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Twitter declares access to its platform a 'human right' amid censorship of conservatives - Fox News

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, argued on "Sunday Morning Futures" that "it now is clear" that Facebook was "utilizing their monopoly position to censor on behalf of the government" regarding information related to COVID-19 and its origins.

Cruz made the comment reacting to Facebook saying on May 26 thatit would no longer ban posts suggesting COVID-19is man-made amid mounting calls from President Biden and other officials for further investigation into the pandemics origins.

The announcement marked a reversal for the social media giant. In February, Facebook said it would remove posts claiming the virus was man-made or manufactured "following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization" who had "debunked" the claim.

"These latest breakthroughshave real consequence becauseit now is clear that Facebookwas operating at the directionof and in the direct benefit ofthe federal government andoperating as the government'scensor, utilizing their monopolyposition to censor on behalf ofthe government," Cruz told host Maria Bartiromo.

He then called it "a very dangerous admissionthat is now out there for Facebook," explaining that there could be legal ramifications for anybody "whosespeech was censored byFacebook" on the topic.

"If you went out andposted the facts that led a yearago to the very stronglikelihood that the COVID virusescaped from a Chinesegovernment lab in Wuhan, China,if you posted that a year agoand they took it down, I thinkthere's a very good argumentyou have a cause of actionagainst Facebook," Cruz said.

"Facebookwould ordinarily say, Were aprivate company, were not liable," he continued.

"Well, you know what, when they act atthe behest of the government, when theycontact [Anthony] Fauci, when they say, 'Should we censor this?' and Faucisays, 'Yes' and they censor it for thefederal government and then magically when thegovernment changes its mind, and say, Oh, allthose facts that were there a year ago,now you're allowed to talk aboutit, they stopped censoring it with aflip of a switch, that lays a very strong argument thatFacebook is operating as a stateagency and that opens verysignificant legal liability."

RAND PAUL GIVES 2-WORD RESPONSE TO FAUCI'S UNEARTHED EMAILS

A Facebook spokesperson did not respond to Fox News request for comment to Cruzs statements on Sunday.

However, in a statement late last month a Facebook spokesperson said, "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps."

"Were continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge," the statement continued.

Politico was first to report on the policy change.

Cruz told Bartiromo that he "unfortunately" doesnt expect that the Biden administration "will doanything to hold them [Facebook] to account."

Public calls for further investigation into the pandemics origins intensified in recent days after the Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers at Chinas Wuhan Institute of Virology displayed symptoms severe enough to seek hospital treatment. A previous State Department fact sheet noted the researchers had "symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness."

In a statement last month, Biden said he had directed his national security adviser to develop a report on the virus origins, including the possibility that it emerged after a laboratory accident, shortly after he became president. Biden said he has called on intelligence officials to present a report on their findings within 90 days.

Facebook and other social media platforms have faced pressure from both sides of the aisle regarding their COVID-19 content policies. Democratic lawmakers have pressed platforms to crack down on the spread of misinformation, while Republicans, including Cruz, have accused the companies of stifling open debate, including discussions on the lab leak theory.

Cruz also reacted to the trove of recently released emails to and from top government epidemiologistAnthony Fauci, which sparked fierce backlash against him from someRepublicans, including Cruz.

"I got to saythis e-mail dump that came outmakes clear that this is notjust being sloppy, it issystematic, and it is systemically aneffort to mislead the Americanpeople," Cruz told Bartiromo.

Cruz added, "He[Fauci] wasn't doing it alone, but he wasdoing it with much of the U.S.government behind him and withFacebook and Big Tech operatingas an extension of the U.S.government in order to silenceany views that disagreed, notwith the science because hewasn't looking for the science,he was suppressing the science,but rather trying to silenceanything that disagreed with thepolitical narrative that wasconvenient that he was pushingat that moment."

The emails Cruz was referencing were obtained first by BuzzFeedvia a Freedom of Information Act request.

The emails reportedly show that Fauci apparently took seriously questions about whether the virus leaked from a lab early in the pandemic before laterdismissingthe possibility.

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A spokesman for Fauci and TheNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases(NIAID), where Fauci serves as director, did not respond to Fox News request for comment.

Fox Business Thomas Barrabi and Fox News Tyler Olson contributed to this report.

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Sen. Cruz argues Facebook was censoring COVID-19 content on behalf of the government - Fox News

CensorPhoto: Magnolia Pictures

Long ago, before the internet, it was easy to be shocked, dazzled, and surprised by some random nightmare that you or your family brought home to watch behind closed doors. Even the best advertising campaigns couldnt rival the word of mouth passing across playgrounds and campfires, the whispers of something wicked you could rent down the street. Legendary among these home-viewing horrors were the so-called video nasties, a loose aggregation of weird and extreme genre films whose content (and accessibility) so incensed the status quo that they were eventually banned in the U.K. by the British Board Of Film Classification. You could go to jail for carrying them.

A subtle (until it defiantly isnt) British mood piece, Censor makes horror films, and the emotions they evoke, feel dangerous againmaybe as dangerous as they felt during that era of moral panic. The film, directed and co-written by Prano Bailey-Bond, is set in 1985, at the height of the video nasty hysteria. It follows Enid Baines (Naimh Algar), one of the most motivated and meticulous censors at the BBFC. Enid has a visceral antagonism towards splatter thats linked to a childhood tragedy the film thankfully discloses up front. The mysterious loss of her sister has left her sensitive to the why of the content she snips and bans, and every step she takes through life winds the spring tighter. Algar, best known perhaps for her regular role on Raised By Wolves, is staggeringly good here, whether wielding a notepad or an axe. She has the best horror movie hair since Greta Gerwig in The House Of The Devil: disciplined, but with meticulous unruly strands that imply repression and a shift in power dynamics.

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Prano Bailey-Bond

Niamh Algar, Sophia La Porta, Adrian Schiller, Michael Smiley

Select theaters June 11; VOD June 18

Professional drive as a primary character trait is a regular trope of the kind of films that Enid, a workaholic herself, makes a living evaluating. Its a dark comic irony that colors much of the films first half. Enid cant see those patterns in the movies she studies; shes capable only of expounding in great detail on the many atrocities depicted, which she does at one point when trying to infiltrate an underground video store. Reducing horror only to acts committed, she has the tunnel vision of The Wicker Mans Sergeant Howie. Its not for entertainment, she tells her mother. I do it to protect people. Of course, to modern viewers, for whom actual snuff is but a few clicks away online, the BBFCs infamous efforts to shield the public from B-movies can seem rather quaint and nave.

The opening credits, a tightly constructed tour of Enids workplace and the films shes tasked with cutting, have an echo of Dario Argentos The Stendhal Syndrome, a similarly upsetting take on the process of metabolizing trauma. Both films feature heralded works of art as a continuum in which their own stories will unfold. Whether its Renaissance portraiture, Abel Ferraras Driller Killer, or todays most immediate meme, what we watch breaks out of the background to touch the lives and the art surrounding it; it plants unseen seeds. And for Enid, these gory films become the engine driving a quest to find her long-lost sister, and she enters the horror industry as an investigative subject instead of distanced adjudicator. Every bootleg banned tape is a clue to the family-wrecking question mark that plagues the Bainses. The path of destiny aligns with the narratives of a renegade cult director, Frederic North (Adrian Schiller), whose work Enid first encounters on the job.

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Horror fans will get the most out of this film, though its no formalist homage or Mad Libs pastiche. Censor is about the emotional situation that horror brings about in its characters and viewers, and its refusal to pile on specific references or indulge in any nostalgia whatsoever may keep audiences at arms length. But it gets at the patronizing, reactionary malice of Thatcherism without underlining that subtext, and demonstrates how trauma is absorbed and weaponized by conservatism in a fashion that will fuel grad school theses for the foreseeable future. Censors meticulous, insidious structure sticks to the subconscious; this is an auspicious debut in modern genre cinema.

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Censor goes back to the cult 80s, and makes horror feel dangerous again - The A.V. Club

Niamh Algar in CensorPhoto: Maria Lax (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing via Ginsberg Libby)

The climactic scene of Prano Bailey-Bonds new horror film Censor features an image that will be familiar even to filmgoers who watch horror movies with their hands clasped over their eye: a bloodied young woman running through the woods. But the way said character, Censor protagonist Enid (Niamh Algar), gets there is unlike any previous filmEnid is a film censor in mid-80s England whose work is starting to merge with her reality in hallucinogenic proportions. Not only does Censor provide a unique take on meta-horror, its uncommonly thorough in its excavation of its protagonists psychology.

Theres a language in horror that the audience understands, Bailey-Bond told Jezebel this week from London via Zoom. With the hardcore fans, you can have another conversation going on within the horror genre that youre referencing. I really enjoy that. But also creating female characters that maybe feel a little bit more real to me...you want to kind of update these things and keep them fresh.

For the record, Bailey-Bond, who co-wrote Censor with Anthony Fletcher, is a horror fan whos loved the type of movies that her protagonist is on a mission to protect the public from. Censor takes place in Thatchers England during the era of the video nasties, a uniquely U.K. cultural moment in which violent and gory exploitation films of the 70s and 80s were being bandied about in the press as cause for specific crimes and, more generally, societys ills. This led to the cutting and (in most cases, temporary) banning of several films, including well-known genre entries like The Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave. The list of the 72 films that were prosecuted (or for which prosecution was attempted) became an infamous trove for horror fans. The closest United States counterpart is the grindhouse flick, but those were largely available on this side of the Atlantic uncut.

Personally, I dont think that film is going to make someone throw their moral compass out of the window and go and do something really horrible to someone else, said Bailey-Bond. If somebody does that its because theyre unbalanced. We need mental health support. I think its about looking at how we look after those people who need help. Its an easy fix and easy blame to say that a movie or a type of music or video game is going to make somebody do something horrible to someone else. I just think its more complicated than that.

And complicate is something Censor does prodigiously. For one thing, the movie does not suggest that entertainment has no bearing on ones psychestill reeling from the childhood loss of her sister, Enid starts to fill in the fuzzy details of the disappearance when shes reminded of it in a movie shes tasked with reviewing, Dont Go in the Church. (Thats one of several convincing nasties-esque movies within the movie that Bailey-Bond dreamed up.) Its not that the character isnt influenced by what shes seeing; its that her experience is so singular and so obviously also informed by her own mental health issues that by exploring said experience, Censor is able to lay bare the ridiculousness of scapegoating art as directly responsible for peoples behavior. The aforementioned wild third act development, in which Enid breaks the film-viewer continuum and enters an alternate cinematic reality, functions as an ad absurdum argument. This is what it would look like for films to dictate peoples behavior, says Censor, as its protagonist wields an axe in a cabin in the woods. A deceptively sunny resolution that, via video glitches, calls bullshit on itself, imagines what the world would look like if the censors got their way and were right all along about art bearing all social responsibility for human behavior. It is accordingly ludicrous.

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The video nasty era is so rich, said Bailey-Bond. Its such an influential period for my generation of filmmakers. Also when you look back objectively at what happened, you can see things with a different set of goggles. You look back and go, wow, Were we all overreacting? Was this something else that was going on politically and the video nasties were a very convenient scapegoat for something else?

Elsewhere, Bailey-Bonds film suggests that not only was the moral panic illogical, it was also misplaced. Enid endures sexism and harassment at work from her fellow censors and a morally bankrupt film producer. While tabloid writers were wringing their hands about imagined movie-influenced violence, a very real exploitation was underway. To Jezebel, Bailey-Bond also pointed out that some of the video nasties, like Ruggero Deodatos infamous 1980 vomitorium Cannibal Holocaust, also depicted very real animal cruelty.

I love horror but there has to be a line in terms of the way we treat each other when were making it, the writer-director said. Nobody needs to get hurt while were making itanimals, women. Theres no need for that. So thats certainly where I draw a line. But thats doesnt have to stop the joy of watching horror and experiencing this fun, cathartic genre.

The vast majority, if not all, of the video nasties were directed by men. In contrast, along with herself, Bailey-Bonds crew featured several women in key roles (cinematographer Annika Summerson, production designer Paulina Rzeszowska, costume designer Saffron Cullane, composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch). This, however, was not an intentional answer to the historical male domination of the genre, according to Bailey-Bond, who says her hiring was slightly circumstantial and based on whom she thought was right for each role. Nevertheless, she says: Its nice to be able to claim something that I guess people dont necessarily naturally fit with a woman director. I like the idea that we can create [beyond] what people expect from us.

Enid works at a fictional agency thats loosely based on the British Board of Film Classification, which was responsible for the censoring and banning of video nasties. While writing their script, Bailey-Bond and Fletcher visited the BBFC (really helpful) and spoke to people who worked as censors during the time Censor takes place. One woman said the rooms were so dark and small and she didnt like horror very muchother censors I spoke to did like horrorbut she said sometimes it felt like really seedy and she was just sat in this poky dark room watching soft porn and like, you know, shed leave work and its night time and you havent seen any daylight, said Bailey-Bond. And those kinds of things really inspired me in terms of thinking about the space and the atmosphere of the censors office and this idea that it felt like a kind of underground rabbit warren. You know, down the ends corridors, youve got like the screams of people dying in horror films.

I wondered if any of the censors Bailey-Bond spoke with had regrets in line with her films reassessment goals. They didnt, but Bailey-Bond found evidence of such reconsideration nonetheless.

I remember reading the file for the Evil Dead, she said. [The BBFC] had cuts made whenever it first got reviewed and then about seven years later, they were looking at it again. There was this little note from one of the examiners whod seen originally saying, I cant believe we reacted like this because theres nothing harmful about this film but the atmosphere at the time made us all more cautious.

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Censor Cleverly Reinterprets the Impact of Exploitation Horror - Jezebel