Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

MORE than three-fifths of UK women dont say what they are thinking on sensitive issues because they are scared they might get into trouble.

The figure for men is only slightly lower, at 52 per cent.

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The majority of the population, then, holding its tongue. Watching its Ps and Qs.

The things they think they cant express without censure concern stuff like immigration.

But also suggesting that ethnic minority people have life just the same as the rest of us.

And that someone born with a whopping great todger is a man, end of story.

This poll, conducted by YouGov, came out towards the end of last year.

We pride ourselves in this country of having freedom of speech.

But that hasnt been true for at least two decades. Its a thing of the past, like Toast Toppers and the hula hoop.

When a bloke can receive a visit from the coppers and be told to watch his thinking for having retweeted a joke about transgendering, you know were in BIG trouble.

Likewise when the radical Left tries to silence brilliant speakers, such as the feminist Germaine Greer or the veteran gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

Meanwhile, the students are busy cancelling our entire history on account of slavery.

Suggest that Islam has been implicated in one or two terrorist attacks and youll be accused of Islamophobia and may get a visit from Plod. Even though its demonstrably true.

Freedom of speech has been under sustained attack for a long while now. And the Government has done nothing about it.

I would like to think that is about to change, as a consequence of the Queens Speech this week.

A new Bill of Rights is due to be introduced in the next month or so to replace the Human Rights Act.

And the Government has promised that the right to voice your opinions, regardless of if they offend some melting snowflake, will supposedly be the crucial part of this bill.

The Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab said: I feel very strongly that the parameters of free speech and democratic debate are being whittled away, whether by the privacy issue or whether its wokery and political correctness.

I worry about those parameters of free speech being narrowed.Well, sure, Dom and about time too.

The Left argues that silencing people is simply a means of preventing minorities from feeling a bit upset.

But I think they are a little more resilient than the social justice warriors like to make out.

In fact, that is not the reason for our politically correct cancel culture.

The real reason is that the Left wants to close down debate on subjects where its policies simply dont add up.

They are terrified rightly that the vast majority of people in the country simply dont agree with them. Just as that YouGov opinion poll proved.

Punishing people who state uncomfortable truths means far fewer people actually say them. They keep schtum.

But the silencing of debate also breeds resentment and rancour: You cant say THAT any more!

And it attacks the entire basis of our democracy: The right to freedom of conscience, freedom of thought and freedom of speech.

I just hope this bill goes far enough. I hope it abolishes the concept of non-criminal hate crime, for a start.

I hope it forces universities to realise that a minority of the perpetually offended cannot stop outside speakers from addressing those who want to hear them.

Its been a long time coming, this bill.

But at least the Government recognises there is a real problem a very big problem.

And is committed to doing something about it.

YAY! The Social Democratic Partys Wayne Dixon swept into office on a landslide in Leeds last week.

Evicting Labour for the first time in history.

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The dim-witted Labour candidate wouldnt even shake his hand.

Ha, who cares? It just goes to show that if people think the two main parties can be beaten, voters will turn out.

Were the party that knows what a woman is, and doesnt want all our statues thrown in the river.

Well done Wayne and if you get a chance, look at the YouTube video of his wife jumping for joy at the election result.

Its a hoot.

DO you remember the days when flying was...well, if not great fun, at least easy to do and efficient?

What the hell has happened?

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We have queues a mile long at our airports.

Some of this is the consequence of Covid, of course.

Too many people are still taking weeks off work with this ineffectual illness.

But the threat of terrorism has also made taking a flight a real pain in the neck.

And then theres the exorbitant cost, occasioned by huge fuel prices.

And always the chance that some unwashed XR hippy div will try to shame you for going on an aeroplane at all.

Think Ill be spending the summer here in Blighty.

These days, foreign travel is just not worth the effort.

King Charles

WELL, he managed to open Parliament without cocking it up.

He walked in a kingly manner through the lobby without stopping to talk to any plants on the way.

He managed to read the Queens Speech.

Without inserting any mental bits about how we should all try homeopathy.

He didnt pass wind or do that annoying wringing of his hands thing he sometimes does.

Maybe Charlie will make a decent King, then.

The last King Charles we had was one of our better monarchs.

I KNOW hes a surfer dude vegan who likes sickly soft rock.

But theres something likeable about our Eurovision contestant Sam Ryder.

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And hes got a decent voice and a decent tune.

I daresay well come last again, because everybody (except for Ukraine) hates us.

In fact, if Ukraine doesnt win by a mile Ill eat my own fingers.

But at least this time I wont have to hide behind the sofa in shame as usual when the UKs entrant is on.

AND so...Sir Keir Starmer is revealed as being even more weaselly and deceitful than the Prime Minister.

Which takes some doing, frankly.

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This is the man who demanded more and more Covid restrictions.

Nothing was enough for him. Hed have had us all chained up in the garden shed if hed had his way.

And he demanded the Prime Minister MUST resign when it was revealed Boris Johnson was being investigated by the Old Bill.

But he will not resign himself when being investigated by the Old Bill.

Hell only resign if he gets a fixed penalty notice.

Which the Durham coppers have said they will not do retrospectively.

The nerve of the bloke is gobsmacking.

And never has a petard been hoisted higher.

WHATS wrong with a chipolata? You can get quite big chipolatas.

Id be delighted if some babe said my old fella resembled a tasty and satisfying sausage.

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All I get instead is references to button mushrooms and, on one occasion, a Midget Gem.

You can hold your head up, Peter Andre.

At least it wasnt a Peperami.

Teacher assessment

THIS is a time of great and frantic worry in the Liddle household.

My daughter is doing her GCSEs. So shes a bit... yknow...STRESSY.

And she asked at one stage: What exactly is the point of these exams?

And do you know, I wonder the same myself.

Tony Blairs son, Euan, has just called for GCSEs to be scrapped. I think hes right.

At 16, the kids should be assessed by their teachers.

Leave the serious exams until A-levels come along.

It would certainly make for a happier house up here.

ISNT it kind of French president Emmanuel Macron to suggest we can join a European alliance?

This would be a politically integrated (his words) trading alliance of European countries.

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Does the description remind you of anything? The man is deluded.

Whyja think we got out in the first place?

Try to govern your own basket-case country and mind your own business.

Oh, and leave our fish alone.

Read the original here:
Weve not had free speech in 20 years. But thats changing... - The US Sun

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

[Editors note: Recently the North Carolina Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of the national civil rights leader, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, of his conviction for trespassing that resulted from a 2017 demonstration at the state Legislative Building. Today, in response to the courts decision, Rev. Barber returned to the Legislative Building to offer the following remarks.]

Even though the highest court wont hear us, we must continue to ask, What is the decibel level of free speech? And who determines whether the authorities are disturbed and protestors have to cease their protest in a public building?

On the day of our arrest, I asked the officer that question: How loud can we be? The basic answer was, Somebody says its disturbing them. The Constitution says freedom of speech and of the press are two of the great bulwarks of liberty and therefore shall never be restrained.

The officers that day said they did not know how loud free speech could be so we asked the court to decide. In essence, we were arrested because someone said our message bothered them. The answer to the question of what was allowable was never answered. None of the work of the General Assembly suffered that day, but the rights of the people did. The people have a right to assemble together, to consult for their common good, to instruct their representatives, and to apply to the General Assembly for redress of grievances; but secret political societies are dangerous to the liberties of a free people and shall not be tolerated, according to the Constitution.

Our aim was to remind our representatives that all political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.

I wear arrest as a badge of honor.

If Im charged and convicted for nonviolently standing with the least of these, its an honor.

I, along with other people of faith, are required by the love espoused in our faith to challenge the governments of nations to care for the least of these. The prophets of old told us to say, Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights and make women and children their prey. Even our Constitution calls us to remind those who hold political power that beneficent provision for the poor, the unfortunate, and the orphan is one of the first duties of a civilized and a Christian state.

If I am charged with using my preaching voice to demand Medicaid expansion for thousands of poor and low-wage workers while Republican legislators block it, or if Im charged for standing with others to speak out for poor and low wage people to make a minimum living of $15 an hour, I will always fight for the right to stand for voting rights, immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, womens rights, and even the free speech rights of my opponents. Im neither perfect nor always right, but as a gospel preacher and a bishop of the church, Im supposed to preach in season and out of season. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is good news to the poor.

The Bible tells me to raise my voice with others like a trumpet. If it means Im charged and eventually have to spend time with others in prison, its a small price to pay. I cannot remain silent while Gods children suffer for no reason other than the poor choices of our elected officials.

Continue reading here:
Rev. William Barber: How loud is free speech permitted to be? - The Progressive Pulse

Much is made of Elon Musk taking over complete control of the online platform Twitter in the next three to six months. Musk has made no secret of his disdain for some of Twitters moderation policies. Presently Twitters stated priorities are facilitating safe, inclusive, and authentic conversations and minimizing the distribution and reach of harmful or misleading information, especially when its intent is to disrupt a civic process or cause offline harm. Efforts to roll back Twitters recent policies could lead to an uptick in disinformation, extremist content, harassment, and hate speech that the company has tried to crack down on for years.

Many Republicans meaning Trump followers are happy because they see Musk opening Twitter to absolute freedom of speech. Also celebrating the takeover of Twitter are white supremacist groups and conspiracists that see a way to return to the platform. Twitter may also be reopened to Trump who was banned as a threat to democracy after Jan. 6. Trump says he wont return to Twitter and, of course, his followers know he always tells the truth. (Putin would be happy with the further deterioration of our democracy with the spread of hate and division that an unfettered Twitter would offer.)

All of us defend freedom of speech. But freedom of speech is not absolute and is subject to restrictions. Categories of speech that the First Amendment does not protect include incitement, defamation, fraud, obscenity, child pornography, fighting words, and threats. That is the way the courts interpret free speech.

Companies like Twitter, however, set their own rules for speech as to what is acceptable. In a few months Musk will make those decisions. Hopefully he allows opinion based on truth and facts and wont allow it to be a platform to further spread more hate and division. We have too much of that already.

Jack Strausser,

Elysburg

Continued here:
Twitter and free speech | Opinion | dailyitem.com - Sunbury Daily Item

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Letter to the editor: Major threat to freedom of speech looms for all - Bozeman Daily Chronicle

While the famous First Amendment right appears simple on paper Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech its interpretation is something Americans have been arguing over ever since the rule was ratified. Its a complex, nuanced topic, so its not surprising that many people get confused about what free speech actually protects, especially now that so many conversations are happening on social media.

Most people dont think theyre confused. Theyre pretty sure they know what free speech is, and theyre often wrong, said Ben Wizner, the director of the ACLUs Speech, Privacy, and Technology project, in a recent Ask the Expert podcast discussing freedom of speech.

So naturally, the free speech debate flares up regularly. Tesla TSLA, -8.33% founder Elon Musk a self-described free speech absolutist has made upholding free speech central to his takeover of Twitter TWTR, +2.65%. Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated, he tweeted.

And reactions to the Twitter board accepting Musks bid have ranged from users celebrating what they consider the return of free speech to the platform, to some threatening to delete Twitter if Musk relaxes community standards.

Related: With Elon Musks Twitter bid, theres more at stake than freedom of speech: It gives him a lot more influence over governments

Many are echoing Musks public square or town square argument to demand freedom of speech on social media; that when speech takes place in a public forum, that speech can qualify for protection of speech under the First Amendment. And many of them have accused Twitter, Metas FB, -6.77% Facebook and Instagram, as well as Alphabets GOOGL, -4.71% YouTube, of stifling free speech by cracking down on accounts that incite violence or spread misinformation actions which have included suspending former President Donald Trumps personal accounts.

But the Supreme Court has ruled that social media platforms are not considered public forums theyre companies hosting conversations. And companies are not responsible for protecting freedom of speech; the government is, legal experts including Stanford law professor Nate Persily explain.

Lets review.

The First Amendment text specifies that Congress which the Supreme Court ruled also extends to the states and local governments may not restrict freedom of speech. Speech that takes place in a traditional or designated public forum (like a sidewalk or park on government property) is protected, with some exceptions. Freedom of speech includes the right to use certain offensive words and phrases to convey political messages; for students to wear black armbands to school to protest a war; or to engage in symbolic speech by burning the American flag, to name a few examples.

But there is actually no constitutional right for a person to express themselves however they want in a private facility, such as within a store or on a company-run social media platform.

The First Amendment is protecting speech from government censorship not your right to say whatever you want on Twitter or Instagram if it violates the codes of conduct.

At the most basic level, the First Amendment protects our speech from interference and reprisal from the government. It doesnt protect our speech from interference, reprisal, censorship from Twitter or from Facebook, or in most cases, from your private employer, said Wizner on his podcast.

Related: Elon Musk wants free speech for Twitter, but that may not work with Europe tech rules

Private companies not only have the right to decide who can speak on their platforms, but they themselves have the First Amendment right to make decisions about the character of their platforms, Persily agreed. In fact, if the government tried to ban Facebook or Twitter from being able to decide what content is and isnt allowed on their sites, then that would be violating those companies own First Amendment rights.

Every community standard at every tech platform would be unconstitutional if it were passed by the government. Banning incitement, hate speech, nudity, obscenity, bullying, self-harm, Holocaust denial almost all of that speech is going to be considered protected under the First Amendment, Persily continued. But the platform decides that they dont want their ecosystem, which is under their control, to be filled with certain types of content that they think make the product unusable.

No, because Twitter is not a government. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are also not legally considered town squares.

Many users may consider their go-to social networks as public forums, because they are publicly sharing their opinions online in those spaces. And these sites are often colloquially called digital public squares or digital town squares.

But thats not what the courts have said. The courts have ruled that social networks are private, and hosting speech by others does not make them public forums.

The internet is a public square, Persily explained. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are not; they are ways of organizing information online. So Twitter and YouTube can pull down content that they consider obscene, inciting violence or spreading misinformation. And banning them from moderating that content on their own sites would ban their First Amendment rights.

Freedom of speech does not include the right to incite imminent lawless action; to make or distribute obscene materials (such as child pornography); or to burn draft cards as an anti-war protest, to name a few. Defamation (aka making false statements to damage a persons reputation) or threatening to commit a crime (such as threatening to kill someone) are also not protected.

One thing to keep in mind is that Twitter is used by people all over the world, and different countries have different rules governing free speech. So Musk will be confronted with Europes Digital Services Act, which will require big tech companies such as Twitter, Google and Facebook parent Meta to police their platforms more strictly, or face billions in fines. And the ACLUs Wizner noted that in Germany, it is a crime to deny the Holocaust while in the U.S., that would be considered protected political speech.

If his approach will be just stop moderating it, he will likely find himself in a lot of legal trouble in the EU, Jan Penfrat, senior policy adviser at digital rights group EDRi, told the Associated Press.

Twitter cannot legally be accused of censoring free speech. But Persily noted that discussions around whether Twitter and other social networks should have a more open speech environment, on the other hand, are perfectly reasonable.

If, like many people, including Musk, youre most afraid of how the platforms will use their power to exclude certain voices that you think should be part of the conversation, well then you are on the side of more speech protection, he said. If youre highlighting that one of biggest problems with these platforms is how much misinformation, hate speech, child sexual exploitation, etc., is on them, then you want to have different rules than you would have that would be passed by the government.

The bottom line is that a social media company creating and enforcing content standards on its own platform is not the same as censorship or stifling free speech, he said.

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What does free speech actually mean? Twitter isn't censoring speech, despite what Elon Musk and many users think - MarketWatch

Courtesy of The Royal Society | See bottom of story for attribution

Elon Musk is the worlds wealthiest man, the owner of Tesla and most recently the owner of Twitter. The ownership of Twitter was a pursuit in the name of free speech for Musk, but it seems to be another bad take from a privileged point of view.

Free speech is significant because it allows for the masses to have access to honest and authentic information.

I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means, Musk tweeted.

One thing that minority groups have had to face for centuries is being silenced by the majority. Twitter allowed diverse communities to safely interact with each other. The overarching issue with such free reign for everyone on Twitter is that while some people view this freedom as democracy, others could just as easily view it as anarchy. Freedom of speech shouldnt be scapegoated for users on Twitter to spread hate. Without governing hate speech and bigotry by banning harmful accounts, the safe spaces for minority groups to share their experiences becomes even more minute.

If there are no censoring systems in place, there are no repercussions of tweeting bigoted takes online.

Not only has Twitter already been a place of harmful interactions, the ability to spread misinformation is easier within a system that promotes freedom the freedom to say what you want, including harmful and inaccurate information.

With the notion of making Twitter private and promoting free speech, many Twitter users are ecstatic to be able to voice opinions that would have once gotten them canceled or banned from Twitter, but others including myself fear the consequences this may bring.

Millions of Americans have been choking back their thoughts and opinions on this platform for YEARS out of fear of being suspended/canceled. I have a feeling the dam is about to break#BringItOn #BeHeard, country music artist and member of Big and Rich John Rich tweeted.

According to The New York Times, groups such as far-right conservatives have vast amounts of followers that are banned from Twitter. The reinstatement of their accounts has given cause for celebration of the far-right.

It is important to note that all who are banned from Twitter are done so on the grounds of not following the guidelines that one agrees to when signing up for their accounts. Youd think that everyone who argues, Maybe if they wouldnt have resisted arrest, would understand the irony of throwing a fit over having a Twitter account banned for not following guidelines.

Much like in kindergarten, if you are hurting someone elses feelings or telling lies, it is not unreasonable to expect a time-out in the near future. This should be an expectation upheld throughout adulthood as well, especially when making harmful statements to people and their communities on Twitter.

With that being said, I believe that the uncensored Twitter that Elon Musk is pursuing welcomes dangerous groups and beliefs, allowing those that encourage hate to have a voice.

Photo by Duncan Hall / CC BY 3.0

The rest is here:
Elon Musk's recent Twitter buy-out is the demise of free speech for minorities on Twitter - The Observer

The Department of Homeland Security has so far released few details on how the Disinformation Governance Board will function and what powers it will have.

WASHINGTON Attorneys general in 20 states have signed onto a letter asking the Biden administration to shut down a Disinformation Governance Board. The AGs say it's an infringement on free speech and could cause people to "self-censor" if they disagree with the government.

The board, part of the Department of Homeland Security, was announced last week. But DHS has so far released few details on how the board will function and what powers it will have.

"The existence of the Disinformation Governance Board will inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech," wrote Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares. "Americans will hesitate before they voice their constitutionally protected opinions, knowing that the governments censors may be watching, and some will decide it is safer to keep their opinions to themselves."

Miyares threatened legal action if the board is not disbanded.

The states signing on are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. All the attorneys general are Republican.

Disinformation board's work, plans remain a mystery

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was attacked Wednesday by members of Congress who have already called for the board to be disbanded.

With disinformation campaigns working to shape opinions on everything from the war in Ukraine to the presidential election in the United States, the rocky start for the board may undermine its effectiveness and hurt the efforts to staunch the harm that false narratives can cause.

It is just an episodic failure, said Brian Murphy, a former director of DHS intelligence arm, of the boards launch. And it has set the true disinformation professionals, wherever they live, back.

Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, Mayorkas said the board would examine how DHS currently counters disinformation and make sure the agency does not infringe on freedom of speech, rights of privacy, civil rights and civil liberties. DHS already has an office of civil rights and civil liberties.

It is going to establish what should have been established years ago: standards, definitions, guidelines and policies, he said.

The boards bungled rollout could also hurt existing efforts to identify and stop foreign disinformation campaigns, which have been labeled a national security threat by both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Russia, China and other adversaries have used social media to push messages at U.S. audiences that stoke division and spread conspiracy theories or falsehoods. In recent months, Russia has waged an aggressive disinformation campaign across platforms to claim images and reports of dead bodies and attacks in Ukraine are fake.

The top Republicans on two key congressional panels wrote to the department on Friday demanding more information. Even privately, congressional staffers say they know little about the board or how it's being funded beyond the spare public announcements made by the department's leadership.

Given the complete lack of information about this new initiative and the potential serious consequences of a government entity identifying and responding to disinformation, we have serious concerns about the activities of this new Board, wrote Reps. Mike Turner of Ohio and John Katko of New York, the top Republicans on the House Intelligence and Homeland Security committees.

DHS that same day held a call with congressional staffers and the boards new director, Nina Jankowicz, an author and expert on Russian disinformation.

According to one person on the call, Jankowicz said there was a broad vision for what the board would do but did not offer specifics to some questions, including how her organization would work with existing anti-disinformation efforts with DHS. The department also has not provided Congress with detailed written plans beyond a summary it sent to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the same day the department publicly announced the creation of the board.

The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ninety-five percent of Americans identified misinformation last year as a problem when theyre trying to access important information, according to a poll conducted by The Pearson Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

But the difference between opinion and disinformation is often contested and many argue the government shouldn't be responsible for drawing the line.

The boards creation spurred outrage across social media, with dozens of conservative pundits and Republican politicians dubbing it the Ministry of Truth, a reference to the government agency responsible for creating propaganda in George Orwells novel 1984. The term Ministry of Truth trended on Twitter for hours.

Thousands of posts focused on Jankowicz, including past social media posts that criticized Republicans and questioned the veracity of stories about Hunter Biden, the president's son. Other posts used anti-Semitic language to attack Jankowicz, who is not Jewish, and Mayorkas, who was born to Jewish parents.

While the board was set up in part to combat Russian disinformation, it instead fueled conspiracy theories and more stories in Russian state media. One Kremlin-backed piece carried the headline: Bidens Ministry of Truth is another propaganda tool.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah on Wednesday echoed that point to Mayorkas directly on Wednesday, calling the board a terrible idea that communicates to the world that were going to be spreading propaganda in our own country.

Homeland Security initially said the board would have the two-part mission of countering Russian disinformation activities and false narratives smugglers use to induce people in Latin America to try to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.

For anyone whos out there who may be concerned about the increase in migrants to the border, this is the kind of apparatus thats working to address disinformation, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing on Monday.

On Monday, the department also announced it would provide quarterly reports to Congress.

Trying to tamp down concerns about thought police, Mayorkas said in a television interview to CNN on Sunday that we in the Department of Homeland Security dont monitor American citizens.

In fact, DHS does. The sprawling department, created in response to the security failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has broad authorities to track and collect data on American citizens. It has repeatedly been accused of misusing those powers. In a bulletin earlier this year, DHS said it was using social media to identify potential conspiracy theories that might inspire domestic violence or terrorism. In a statement on Monday, the agency also released examples of how it has responded to misinformation in the past, including during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 when falsehoods spread about drinking water and shelter locations.

And organizations tracking disinformation monitor social media, where its sometimes impossible to determine the nationality or location of individual users. Disinformation researchers often identify popular conspiracy theories and trending falsehoods in the U.S. by monitoring public social media groups, pages and accounts.

DHS wont have the ability to remove posts or accounts that it deems are spreading disinformation. That power still rests with the tech companies themselves, said Katie Harbath, a former public policy director for Facebook who is now the International Republican Institutes technology and democracy director.

The new disinformation board could help the platforms spot some information operations they might be missing, she said.

DHS is going to have to do what they normally do, Harbath said. If theres a post they think should be taken down or fact-checked, they can report that to the platforms, but the platforms are going to make their own call.

Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri and Ben Fox contributed to this report.

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20 AGs call for end to Disinformation Governance Board, cite threat to free speech - ABC10.com KXTV

Last week a great blow was struck for online freedom. Billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter. Liberals around the world have clutched their pearls as Musk promises to bring the once cherished principle of freedom of speech to the platform.

But his task may not be so easy. Its not just Twitters governance that wants to restrict what can be said on Twitter. Other very powerful forces also want to control what is said online.

At the same time that Musk was putting in his bid for Twitter, the European Union agreed on outlines for its Digital Services Act, which would create a new European bureaucracy able to police what is said online, with a global reach.

After 16 months of negotiation, on April 23 the European Commission, European Parliament and national governments agreed to plans to regulate Twitter and other social networks.

The Digital Services Act (dsa) is now set to become a reality by the end of the year. It will set up a new EU bureaucracy to manage the biggest tech companiesthose with more than 45 million European users. The European Commission will be hiring around 150 people to regulate these companies, as well as spending money on outside advisers.

The act will establish broad responsibilities for big companies to curb disinformation. Penalties for noncompliance are huge: Firms could face fines of up to 6 percent of global revenue. For Twitter, this would be hundreds of millions of dollars. For Facebook, it would be billions.

The response from many advocates for free speech online has been a sigh of relief. Some of what the EU had been proposing would have been horrific for free speech. For example, one idea under discussion would have forced large social networks to prescreen all their posts. Rather than deleting bad posts, the networks would have had to approve all posts before they went live, largely by using some kind of computer program. Not only would this have brought in a level of censorship beyond anything weve seen so far, it would have also been completely unworkable, and so it was dropped.

But the fact that it could have been worse shouldnt blind us to what is happening. The European Union is essentially setting up a new regulatory body that will control what is said online around the world.

There are also quite a lot of good things in the new plan. There are provisions that limit the way big companies harvest data on you, track you, and target you with ads.

The EU cites some excellent reasons for introducing these changes. It is correct that there are major problems with social media. It rightly points to the real harm theyre causing, especially among teens.

But just because the problem is real doesnt mean the EUs solution will be an improvement. None of this eliminates the fact that the EU wants more control over what people say on large social networks.

To the EU, one of the biggest problems with social media is that there is too much free speech. Businesses arent doing enough to curb disinformation.

The EU has no first amendment, and speech that would be protected in the United States is often classed as hate speech and outlawed in European companies. The dsa brings these restrictions online.

Large social media sites will have an obligation to deal with disinformationspeech that is not classed hate speech but that the EU still doesnt like. They wont have to ban it, but theyll have to do somethinge.g. putting on a disinformation warning, shadow banning it, quietly stopping the post from spreading, or putting on a fact check.

The EU will be able to grab even more power in a crisis. If the EUs national authorities vote to declare a crisis, for example due to a pandemic, the EU wants the power to tell social media companies exactly what a user can and cannot post.

The EU is already threatening to ban Twitter if Musk goes for what they call a free speech absolutists direction. Thierry Breton, EU commissioner for the internal market, told the Financial Times that if Twitter does not comply with our law, there are sanctions6 percent of the revenue and, if they continue, banned from operating in Europe.

This law will likely soon restrict what can be posted in the U.S. too. Columbia law professor Anu Bradford writes in her book The Brussels EffectHow the European Union Rules the World: Instead of being guided by Americas First Amendment free-speech protections, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube follow the EUs definition of hate speech worldwide when deciding which content to remove from their platforms.

Having certain posts show up in the U.S. but not in the EU is possible, but a lot of work. Its much simpler just to apply the EUs rules worldwide, which is what happens time and again.

This is why many on the radical left, such as former U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, are cheering the EU on. When social media companies were in the hands of billionaires that thought like them, the left in the U.S. said, Theyre private businesses; they can do whatever they wantif they want to censor, they can do so. As soon as Twitter gets bought out by someone they dont agree with, they start setting up a Disinformation Governance Board. But in the U.S. theres only so much the government can do to censor; it is limited by the First Amendment. But the EU isnt. If the EU does the enforcing, its much harder for Americans to object.

The radical left is so desperate to keep control over social media it would rather empower the EU to police it than allow political opponents free speech. If the U.S. really fought for free speech online, the EU would have a hard time taking that away from them. But instead, Americas leaders are helping the German-led EU.

This law is still many months from going into effect. But already it is exposing a lot about both the radical left and the EU. In his 2019 article Germany Is Taking Control of the Internet, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote:

The European Union is working to gain control of the Internet. It has already made significant progress in this effort.

Germanys ambitions for the Internet should concern everyone, even those who dont have a computer. The EUs behavior on this issue exposes the dictatorial nature of this German-dominated entity. Really, we are witnessing the manifestation of the spirit of the Holy Roman Empire in the tech world. The biblically prophesied seventh and final resurrection of this empire wants to control the Internet!

We must put this issue in the context of Bible prophecy and history. The German-led EU is behaving the way the Holy Roman Empire has always behaved. Germany is once again seeking to impose its will on the world. This is a difficult message to accept, and many people will disagree with it, but it is the truth!

The Internet is changing before your eyes. It was once a free-for-all. Now the vast majority of traffic is funneled through a handful of gatekeepers who will only allow you to see certain things. And it is the German-led European Union that wants to determine exactly what you can and cant see.

This new power is already making itself felt, and it wants to control what you read and say. This is exactly the kind of power described in the Bibleand one weve been forecasting for decades.

Revelation 17 describes a power that repeatedly rises in Europe. What is rising today is an extension of what has gone before. Verse 8 calls this power the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. Theres a power with a similar, censorious character that comes and goes on the European scenethe Holy Roman Empire. Revelation 18 shows this power dominating global trade and commerce. We see this building in the EUs regulatory superpower. Other chapters describe this power regulating religious belief, trying to control what people think and say.

This power rising in Europe is already making itself felt around the world. A crucial part of end-time events is already affecting your life. To learn more about it and where it is leading, read Mr. Flurrys article Germany Is Taking Control of the Internet.

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Free Speech on Twitter? Not If the EU Can Help It - theTrumpet.com

Social media platforms achieved unbridled growth by adopting a laissez faire approach to user-generated content. This approach was underpinned by legislative frameworks around the world which sought to indemnify content hosting internet intermediaries from liability arising out of user-generated content. At the same time, as private companies, social media platforms have the freedom to decide what content they want to host. This freedom is reflected in differential content standards across different platforms and differential application of standards for the same piece of content.

Platforms have carte blanche to decide what content they want to host and distribute. However, since all major social media platforms were based primarily in the United States (US), their content moderation policies drew upon American First Amendment principles (which prohibit government from curtailing free speech, among other freedoms) to restrict only narrowly defined categories of content. Platforms have similarly sought recourse to First Amendment free speech principles to reject calls for an interventionist approach towards misinformation. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are all on the record stating their aversion to being the arbiters of truth and that the platforms should be a marketplace of ideas.

Taken at face value, these platforms proclivity towards free speech seems not just reasonable, but laudable. However, it can be argued that, for social media platforms, free speech is a business model instead of a principled imperative. It is evident that a hands-off approach to speech is operationally simpler since content moderation is not just complex but also politically fraught. Moreover, important high-profile content moderation decisions by platforms are often ad hoc and driven by external pressure especially government, media, and public relations instead of coherent speech policies. Further, platforms have been known to take down or block content (including critical political speech) based on government requests while also making exceptions for powerful users linked to the government and its affiliates.

Most importantly, platforms have opportunistically used free speech and the protection against liability for intermediaries to advance their business models. Traditional news media is liable for published content and must thus invest time and resources to vet information before publishing. Platforms compete with traditional news publishers for advertising revenue while enjoying the double advantage of speed (to get content to users) and protection from liability (for unvetted content). Since, advertising revenue is directly proportional to the amount of time users spend, platforms have exploited this twin advantage to boost user engagement without caring about the deleterious impact of a surfeit of misinformation on the information ecosystem and wider democracy.

Social media platforms keep users engaged by constantly keeping their feeds populated with new content from sources and content creators that the user has not proactively followed. This deliberate boost to the organic reach of a subset of content by the platforms is known as amplification. Since quality and value-based amplification is difficult due to the challenge of determining quality and value, platforms rely on amplification based primarily on engagement signals.

This approach absolves platforms of the need to exclude vast swathes of bad content while remaining value agnostic and avoiding charges of editorial control. Since hateful and polarising content gets more engagement (as admitted by platforms themselves), this value-neutral and engagement-driven approach is resulting in amplification of misinformation and other harmful content.

It is this turbocharged distribution through social media platforms, which has made misinformation and propaganda invasive and pervasive. These platforms have further elided the distinction between different sources of information which has removed an important signal of credibility and ideological positioning of the consumed content. Instead, engagement is perceived to be a bigger driver of the importance and by extension credibility of a piece of news.

This equal treatment (appearance and placement of different and unequal sources of information) and making virality instead of quality the primary determinant of a sources credibility and/or a piece of contents importance has eroded the distinction between vetted information, propaganda and misinformation in the minds of the user. The impact is acute in India because platforms have de-facto control over the distribution of the message combined with low-digital literacy among users.

It is a testament to the efficacy of the lobbying efforts of social media platforms that instead of focusing on the amplified distribution of misinformation, the discourse has exclusively framed measures to reduce misinformation as being in tension with freedom of expression, an issue which can arise only in the case of outright removal. Moreover, since platforms are private companies, the issue even in the case of outright removal of content, is not freedom of speech but political neutrality of the platform. The degree of permissiveness for misinformation, hate speech, etc is thus a political and/or commercial choice by the platforms.

It is clear that even if free speech was an article of faith for social media platforms, it has now evolved into a justification for a lucrative business model that privileges user engagement over information quality. Moreover, the platform-fuelled binary between misinformation and free speech is a red herring designed to obfuscate platforms role in the distribution and amplification of misinformation. The first step to addressing the problem of disinformation is to reset the terms of the debate in a manner which helps our democracy instead of private platforms.

Ruchi Gupta is executive director of the Future of India Foundation. This article is based on the Foundations upcoming report, Politics of Disinformation. The views expressed are personal

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Free speech and social media: Reset the debate - Hindustan Times

Goldstones most recent book is "On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights."

On April 12, former Vice President Mike Pence gave a talk at the University of Virginia as part of the Ken & Janice Shengold Advancing Freedom Lecture Series. His appearance was sponsored by Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative students organization founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1960. Tickets were free and the lecture was open to all. After the invitation was announced, as is inevitable these days when a controversial speaker is invited to a college campus, fierce protests ensued with demands that Pence not be granted such a prestigious forum.

An editorial in the Cavalier Daily, the universitys student newspaper established in 1890, was particularly scathing. For Pence, it read, gay couples signify a societal collapse, Black lives do not matter, transgender individuals and immigrants do not deserve protection, and the pandemic should not be taken seriously. The editorial went on to accuse Pence of at least tacitly encouraging violence against marginalized groups, with the college administration complicit by its willingness to provide him a platform. The Universitys silence is deafening. Do not mistake this for neutrality, however. To be silent in the face of those like Pence is a choice in this case, a choice to fail to protect the lives of those on Grounds who Pence blatantly threatens through his rhetoric and policies.

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The editorial instigated as much of a backlash as had the invitation, and the resulting kerfuffle made national headlines. Liberals decried Pences opportunity to foist hate speech on impressionable students, while conservatives brayed about censorship and cancel culture, as if they, unlike the left, believed in a free exchange of ideas.

The university refused to back down and Pence was allowed to give his talk, in which he exploited the opportunity to denounce woke culture and defend freedom, although he did not address his advocacy of positions that would deny freedom to the groups mentioned in the editorial. The audience was enthusiastic and, since those in attendance were almost exclusively conservative, the questions were a series of thinly disguised talking points that allowed Pence to appear both reasonable and fair-minded.

It might be useful to consider how the event might have played out had the left not largely boycotted the lecture, but instead had grabbed up a bunch of the tickets to create a more diverse audience. For that, one need look back more than a decade, when a similar controversy yielded a far different outcome.

In September 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited by Columbia University to speak at the School of International and Public Affairs annual World Leaders Forum, after which he would take questions from the audience. Unlike Pence, who is supported by roughly half the American population, Ahmadinejad was almost universally reviled, holding views so extreme and with a manner so boorish as to border on caricature.

Protests were vociferous and vitriolic. Jews in particular were incensed Ahmadinejad had insisted Israel should be wiped off the map and that the Holocaust was a myth. Dov Hikind, a New York assemblyman from Brooklyn and an orthodox Jew, compared Ahmadinejad to Hitler. Many Christians were equally appalled. James Gennaro, a New York City councilman, grumbled that Columbia is making a mockery of civilized discourse by allowing this madman to participate. Others pointed out that Iran was supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents and secretly building nuclear weapons.

Like the administration at Virginia, Columbia refused to back down. The universitys president, Lee Bollinger, chose to moderate the talk himself. But Bollinger had no intention of being foolhardy everyone at Columbia remembered the student takeover in 1968. He decided to abandon good manners and introduce Ahmadinejad as if he were a prosecutor seeking the maximum penalty for a pedophile.

Bollinger, with Ahmadinejad sitting just feet from him, described his invited guest as a petty and cruel dictator and noted, According to Amnesty International, 210 people have been executed in Iran so far this year twenty-one of them on the morning of September 5th alone. This annual total includes at least two children further proof, as Human Rights Watch puts it, that Iran leads the world in executing minors. He ridiculed Ahmadinejads views on the Holocaust as simply ridiculous. Bollinger closed his remarks by saying, I am only a professor who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.

To his credit, Ahmadinejad refused to take the bait. He did his best to be charming, or at least disarming. He admitted that the Holocaust had occurred. For a time, it appeared that those who feared giving Ahmadinejad the opportunity to falsify his image had been correct.

But then it was time for questions. Ahmadinejad did his best to duck and dodge past accusations he heard all too often, but then one student asked about the regimes record of executing homosexuals. Ahmadinejad replied, In Iran, we dont have homosexuals, like in your country. ... In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I dont know whos told you that we have this.

The audiences reaction was immediate and unmistakable. They laughed! The more Ahmadinejad tried to justify his answer, the more the audience guffawed. And that laughter did more to expose the absurdity and hypocrisy of both Ahmadinejads defense of Irans human rights record and his countrys faux commitment to fairness and common decency than 100 position papers from the State Department or even graphic footage on cable news.

If those who had objected to Pences human rights record and what they see as his faux commitment to fairness and common decency had chosen to attend his talk en masse and asked the same sort of difficult questions, perhaps he would not have left Charlottesville feeling quite so good about himself.

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