Are you one of the 1.3 billion people who use TikTok? If so, youve probably found yourself wondering at some point: how are so many of these TikTokers so good-looking? Why do so many of them have such nice houses? Why does everyone look so rich?

To put it simply, its because thats what TikTok wants you to see. According to internal documents acquired by The Intercept and interviews with internal sources conducted by Netzpolitik, TikTok moderators received instructions to suppress images of undesirable users deemed unattractive, queer, poor, or disabled. In these leaked documents, specific guidelines advised moderators to pay special attention to physical and environmental features that would decrease the short-term new user retention rate since, if the characters appearance or the shooting environment is not good, the video will be much less attractive, not worthing [sic] to be recommended to new users. As a result, staff were tasked with examining videos for undesirable facial characteristics, abnormal body shapes, and even cracks in the walls or outdated dcor in order to prevent such videos from reaching the For You page, the central organ of the platform that allows users to become TikTok famous.

Though representatives from the company have explained that these restrictions were only implemented to protect special users from being vulnerable to cyberbullying, many argue that this form of prevention has simply led to discriminatory practices punishing those that are supposed to be protected. As well, the leaked guidelines clearly expressed otherwise.

We perceive this as censorship for which there is no basis, assert Manuela Hannen and Christoph Krachten, members of German disability support foundation Evangelische Stiftung Hephata. It is completely absurd not to punish the trolls, but the victims of cyberbullying.

Furthermore, while TikTok has dismissed these claims as being an early blunt attempt at preventing bullying that is no longer in place and which was only meant to be used temporarily after TikToks creation in 2017, sources point out that such policies were still in use as recently as late 2019. Moreover, multiple creators have still noticed their videos being censored or removed for violating community guidelines despite other creators on the platform sharing similar videos without repercussion.

One of these creators, Ashley Reeves, voiced her outrage on her Instagram account: This video got taken down and flagged as OFFENSIVE on tiktok if youve been on tiktok, there is [sic] P L E N T Y of women dancing in swimsuits whos [sic] videos seem to stay put- whats the difference? From what I can tell theyre all thin women.

Videos featuring undesirable traits have not been the only ones facing censorship. Users have also noticed that, although searches for the Hong Kong protests on other social media platforms yield a vast assortment of posts and pictures, conducting the same search on the China-owned platform results in very few videos of these events. The same occurs when searching for content related to Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or Uyghur persecution.

This has thus led to speculation that moderators purposefully remove content running counter to the Communist Party of Chinas directives. Indeed, leaked documents published by both The Intercept and The Guardian have revealed that accounts are in fact suspended or banned if they display political imagery defaming political leaders, endangering national security, or violating any of the other listed guidelines. Although representatives argue that videos are only punished for violent, political imagery and not specifically for harming the CPCs ideals, many remain skeptical due to the parallels drawn between TikTok and other Chinese media platforms, which must comply with the CPCs standards or otherwise face punishment. Because of TikToks extensive international audience, some are concerned this will allow the Chinese government to use it as a propaganda tool.

Even if the platforms rules solely seek to limit political activity in general, many still find this problematic since it can lead to unequal representation on the application, especially in times of political crisis. Recently, for example, TikTok faced backlash for allegedly censoring videos supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, which creators argue has long been an issue on the app along with Black underrepresentation.

Critics therefore argue that, given the companys wealth and influence, TikTok can and must do better. Whether or not it truly plans to commit, only time will tell.

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How Tiktok Uses Censorship on Its "For You" Page - The Bull and Bear

The crackdown on alleged hate speech is intensifying as social media platforms either expand their policies or step up enforcement of their terms of service.

Reddit banned over 2,000 subreddits as part of a focus on what it deemed hate speech, including The_Donald as well as the subreddit for the leftist podcast Chapo Trap House. Twitch temporarily banned President Trump. Facebook booted a boogaloo group (part of a loose affiliation of anti-government forces that vie for a second civil war), citing its promotion of violence. And YouTube banned a group of far-right content creators, including white nationalists such as David Duke.

The actions seem spurred by a variety of factors, including rising internal pressure from tech employees, the protests around the police killing of George Floyd, Twitter enforcing its terms of service against President Trump and growing advertiser boycotts. The moves ratchet up the volume on a longstanding debate and raise important questions about free speech in the modern internet era, including what constitutes hate speech, whether platforms are obligated to allow hateful content and, most of all, who should get to make decisions about the nature of content.

I defend the companies power and right to make these business decisions, as I defend the right of individuals and organizations to pressure them to do so, said Nadine Strossen, a law professor at New York University and the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in an email.

But she is convinced any speech restrictions that go beyond whats consistent with the U.S. Constitutions First Amendment and International Human Rights principles will be at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive.

A double-edged sword

The application of social media company standards may not mitigate the potential harms of the speech at issue, according to Strossen. The standards for describing the targeted speech are overly vague and broad, meaning they give full power of discretion to those that enforce them, she said. Giving individuals that power means theyll enforce them in accordance with their personal views and may mean that speech by minority views and voices is disproportionately censored, she said.

This has been the case previously when platforms such as Instagram flagged body positive imagery as inappropriate. Facebook reportedly trained its moderators to take down curses, slurs and calls for violenceagainst protected categories such as white males, but allow attacks on subsets such as black children or female drivers. Facebooks formulaic approach to what qualified as a protected category is what allowed some vulnerable subsets to fall through the cracks.

Ironically, many of the very same civil rights/human rights groups that are now clamoring for more restrictions by the platforms have consistently complained that the existing hate speech standards have disproportionately silenced Black Lives Matter activists, Pipeline protesters, and other social justice advocates, said Strossen. Why do they think this would change in the future?

Amy James, co-founder of the Open Index Protocol (OIP), which is like a decentralized patent filing system protecting content thats created on it, organizing it and making sure creators get paid,said the bans were horrifying for a number of reasons.

Even if you disagree with information, censoring it doesnt destroy it, it just allows it to spread without counterpoints, said James in an email. But on the positive side, it highlights the profound censorship.. on Web 2.0, and the more widespread [the] awareness about it, the better.

James added she absolutely sees more bans in the future, largely because the internet isnt a real-life public place where First Amendment protections apply.

On the web, we primarily communicate using platforms that belong to private companies, so they can and should have a right to filter content however they want based on financial criteria, community standards, etc, said James.

Thats a key part of this debate. By entering into these platforms, you give them the right to moderate and regulate your speech largely as they see fit, with little to no recourse. Its ironic the people most adamant about the government not intervening in private businesses lose sight of that when it comes to social media.

Look no further than Trump, who has stridently dismantled business regulations but signed an Executive Order calling for reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields social media companies from liability for content they publish.

Is there a way forward?

Rather than going after legislative fixes for Section 230, James said solutions offered by blockchain and the decentralized Web 3.0 provide a better path. In practice, that looks like supporting cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, and open-source web browsers like Brave. She also points to platforms building with OIP Streambed Media, a tamper-proof media index, or Al Bawaba, the Middle Easts and North Africas largest independent news platform, which is building integrations with OIP as good options to help encourage and build Web 3.0, which would not allow for centralized censorship.

There are censorship-free platforms available now like Gab and 4chan but the trade-off with these platforms is some audiences may not go to them because of their content. One person taking a stand alone has almost no effect, she said.

Gab and 8chan (4chans rowdier offspring) also face consistent threats to their ability to function, as domain name providers such as GoDaddy and payment processing companies such as PayPal and Stripe have previously booted Gab off their services. Such methods go beyond just a ban, and fundamentally affect such websites ability to continue.

These platforms are based on the commitment they wont censor you when they absolutely still could, based on their centralized nature.

Strossen envisions a market in which there are a number of viable alternatives with diverse content moderation standards to choose from. Ideally, this would result in maximally empowered end users to make their own informed choices. She points to Parler, which is branded as a free speech platform, as one recent example of where conservatives have flocked, but even its content moderation standards are as hopelessly vague and over broad as all the other platforms, she said.

Now, as Parlers user base has crossed one million, CEO John Matze is also grappling with the limits of speech.

As soon as the press started picking up, we had a ton of violations, Matze told Fortune. We had a queue of over 7,000 violations, and we only had three people to police the entire site.

The Santa Clara principles are another framework for moderation deductions. They were spearheaded by the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation and others, and laid out minimum requirements for companies disclosing information about moderation. This includes publishing the numbers of posts removed and accounts permanently or temporarily suspended, giving notice to each user whose content is taken down or account is suspended about the reason for the removal or suspension, and offering a meaningful opportunity for timely appeal of any content removal or account suspension.

Strossen said no one is going to be completely satisfied with any standards no matter how theyre phrased or enforced because of the subjectivity of the issues at hand.

One persons hate speech is someone elses cherished speech, one persons fake news is someone elses treasured truth and one persons extremist speech is someone elses freedom-fighting speech, said Strossen.

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Social Media Bans 'Highlight the Profound Censorship on Web 2.0' - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

British universities have been accused of censorship for agreeing to complywith Chinese internet censorship to offer remote courses to international students.

The courses are offered throughsoftware that allows Chinese students who would normally study in the UK to continue their studies remotely.

However, the software has to comply with strict Chinese internet firewalls. This means students are limited to only course material that has been approved by Beijing.

The software is developed by JISC, a digital learning not-for-profit. The pilot programme involves Kings College London, Queen Mary, York University and Southampton University.

JISCs software, which has been built with Chinese technology giant Alibaba, provides course materials to students in China. A spokesperson said traffic has to travel through three international gateways and will only provide access to learning materials that are part of the curriculum specified by the UK institution.

These are placed on an allow list of course materials. The spokesperson added none of these links have been blocked.

A Universities UK spokesperson said academic freedom was of utmost importance adding it was not aware of any alteration to course content to comply with local laws.

The BBC first reported universities would by complying with Chinese internet rules.

China sceptics warned Britains universities could be conducting self-censorship by only allowing access to certain course approved materials to comply with local internet law.

Originally posted here:

UK universities accused of censorship by complying with China - Telegraph.co.uk

Writing about the protest movement in Hong Kong, I began to notice the absences everywhere I went. A moving patchwork of white, black and grey squares decorated walls and pavements, as more and more protest slogans were erased from the public gaze. Now, with Beijings enactment of national security legislation in Hong Kong, that void has suddenly gaped wider, swallowing words, ideas, open discussion, and even people from public view.

The legislation bans secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. The first sight of it for Hongkongers was the moment that it came into effect on Tuesday at 11pm, ahead of the annual 1 July protest march, which itself had been declared illegal.

In one fell swoop, the new law pushed through many of the changes most feared by Hongkongers, by giving mainland legal bodies jurisdiction over some cases inside the territory, allowing the mainland security services to establish offices in the territory, permitting rendition to China and implementing national security education in local schools.

By Thursday night, the government had announced that the most popular protest slogan an eight-character Chinese phrase translating as Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our Times violates the legislation as it connotes Hong Kong independence. This phrase has been chanted at every march by almost every attendee. Since that moment, those Chinese characters began disappearing from social media, replaced by initials (GFHG, SDGM), numbers that serve as Cantonese homophones (3639 0242), symbols or geometric representations of the characters. One protest consisted of eight people standing in the street in two groups of four, each holding up a blank piece of paper. In just a few days, those words have already become unspeakable.

By Saturday, Hong Kongs justice secretary, Teresa Cheng, was warning people not to test the national security law by using the slogan. The previous day a 24-year-old man had been charged with inciting secession because his motorbike was adorned with a flag bearing the motto. He was also accused of terrorist acts for driving his bike into a group of policemen.

There are no sources of authority to provide guidance. There are only warnings

Overnight Hong Kongs reality has become Kafkaesque, even Pythonesque, were it not for the real risk of breaking a law that could carry a sentence of life imprisonment. Even the act of alerting Hongkongers to newly illegal acts has become fraught. The government broadcaster, RTHK, used asterisks in its tweets (variously L******* Hong Kong! and Liberate H*** K***!), while the founder of Hong Kong Free Press, Tom Grundy, said he expected legal and bureaucratic terrorism designed to drain the websites resources.

The surrealism was heightened by the police detention of an overjoyed soccer fan suspected of inciting independence after shouting Long live Liverpool! to celebrate the teams Premier League win. He was later released. Among 370 people arrested on 1 July, at least 10 were detained for violating the new legislation, including three women for possessing offensive materials. Among these, it emerged from police photos, was a sticker emblazoned with the word Conscience causing one netizen to comment that in a country without conscience such a sticker surely amounts to secession. The lack of clarity surrounding the offences, combined with such arbitrary application, has left the population dazed. Libraries have already begun pulling books by certain pro-democracy figures from the shelves for review, signalling a looming assault on freedom of information.

In the decade I spent reporting from China, I found that the laws were often less black and white than Id imagined. In covering sensitive stories, we navigated the ambiguity of the shifting grey zone, guided by interviewees who had often spent decades skating on that political thin ice. This is not possible in Hong Kong, where a gigantic black zone has been imposed overnight on what had been a relatively free society. There is no precedent to draw upon, no experts to consult. The fact that no Hong Kong officials not even the chief executive, Carrie Lam had seen the legislation prior to its imposition means there are no sources of authority to provide guidance. There are only warnings.

This law is global in scope, applying to non-residents outside Hong Kong

Fear is the key to its implementation. That fear is real and its working. In the run-up to the laws enactment, some prominent political groups shut down voluntarily. Nathan Law, the territorys youngest lawmaker, who was elected in 2016 and then disqualified on a technicality, announced that he had left Hong Kong.

The national security law compels internet security providers to comply with the authorities requests for information. Now people I know are erasing themselves from view. Facebook pages and Twitter accounts are disappearing, and my phone, which once buzzed incessantly from notifications from Telegram groups, has fallen silent. Friends are asking to move our communications to more secure platforms. Some are even pleading with their contacts to delete all their WhatsApp conversations.

In this digital era when so much of our identity is online, removing your own archive is not just self-censorship, its an act of self-effacement. But many Hongkongers now fear they have no choice but to cancel themselves as an act of survival. This law is global in scope, applying to non-residents outside Hong Kong. This means that any discussion of Hong Kong politics in classrooms, newspapers or parliaments around the world now involves a corollary discussion of risk, particularly if any participants are inside or from Hong Kong.

I wrote a book about the steps taken by Chinas Communist party to erase the collective memory of the Tiananmen Square killings of 4 June 1989, and its success in muting discussion of the anniversary inside China. I never imagined that the party would try to control public discourse inside freewheeling, vibrant Hong Kong. The extraterritorial nature of this legislation poses an assault on language and freedom of speech that is global in nature. To ignore it risks entrenching those absences worldwide.

Louisa Lim is the author of The Peoples Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited and a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne

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Hongkongers face a Kafkaesque reality as censors outlaw the words of protest - The Guardian

Washington, D.C. The Senate Finance Subcommittee hearing of June 30, 2020, highlighted the need for American policymakers to review their approach toward Chinas censorship, as well as the self-censorship practiced by American entities trading with China.

International Campaign for Tibet Chairman Richard Gere was one of the panelists who testified.

The hearing focused on Censorship as a Non-Tariff Barrier to Trade and made a direct connection between the oppressive policies the Chinese government imposes on its citizens and the negative impact those policies have on foreign companies that are prohibited to censor freedom of expression in democratic countries but banned from the Chinese market for that very reason.

As noted during the hearing, Chinese companies, including state-owned enterprises, are not subject to censorship while operating in the United States, in clear violation of the principle of reciprocity.

Bipartisan concerns

As subcommittee Chairman Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in his opening remarks, the hearing was an opportunity for Congress to see if such censorship by China constitutes a trade barrier in violation of [World Trade Organization], multilateral and bilateral agreements and practices.

The focus on censorship was bipartisan, with subcommittee Ranking Member Sen. Robert P. Casey, Jr., D-Pa., making this case in his opening remarks. The actions undertaken by the Chinese government include direct barriers, such as blocking movies from entering their market or restricting content, Casey said, to blocking internet firms, to dictating content related to Chinas territorial and economic claims, to demanding action or inaction by businesses related to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and the ongoing human rights abuses in Xinjian[g].

Chinese interference in Hollywood

Among areas touched upon at the hearing was the influence China has over Hollywood and how that affects American creative freedom. Gere recalled his experience on the issue and what it means. He said: His speaking out for human rights in China and Tibet hasnt directly affected his career, but, Im probably an unusual case.

Self-censorship has become an issue in Hollywood. Theres no doubt that the combination of Chinese censorship, coupled with American film studios desire to access Chinas market, can lead to self-censorship and to avoiding social issues that great American films once addressed, he said.

The atmosphere in Hollywood has changed since the 1990s when major studios released several films showing the brutality of the Chinese Communist Party. Imagine Marty Scorseses Kundun, about the life of the Dalai Lama, or my own film Red Corner, which is highly critical of the Chinese legal system, he said. Imagine them being made today. It wouldnt happen.

Chinese actresses and directors have told him they cant work with him because it would end their careers. One Chinese director was in tears with me having to call me up and say that he couldnt work with me, Gere said. That his career would be over, and his family could not travel.

The way China pressures American studios to do such things as remove the Taiwanese flag from movies doesnt merely show the power of the Chinese government. Its also very illustrative of their weakness, Gere said. Its the way that theyre hypersensitive about the Dalai Lama, the kindest, most generous man on the planet, whos consumed and saturated with love and compassion and forgiveness. The mere mention of his name makes them crazy.

Other panelists

Beth Baltzan from the Open Markets Institute, which uses journalism to promote greater awareness of the political and economic dangers of monopolization, had this analysis of Chinese censorship in her testimony at the hearing: The CCPs leverage over the speech of American citizens comes in large part from its economic leverage over the United States. Abating the Chinese governments economic leverage over us, in turn, abates its leverage over the exercise of our constitutional rights. There are different approaches that can be adopted to diminish that leverage.

Nigel Cory, associate director, trade policy, at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, in his testimony, highlighted the impact of Chinas censorship on American business interests. He said, US firms have lost significant revenue by being blocked or inhibited from accessing and operating in the Chinese market.

The impact has been especially damaging given that for many companies, their market access has been denied during a critical, formative period of economic growth in China. This has not only reduced US company global market share but provided Chinese competitors with a protected market from which to launch competitive challenges in other regions, such as South America, the rest of Asia, and Africa.

Self-censorship

Cory also focused on the self-censorship aspect of the issue when he said, Censorship in China is a broad, complicated, and opaque system involving a range of actors, laws, and regulations, and social, economic, and political interests. At the individual level, these come together and result in considerable self-censorship given people realize the potential negative consequences of crossing the many unclear lines on what may or may not be allowed. In this way, Chinas pursuit of censorship has resulted in significant societal changes.

His perspective about self-censorship in China also applies to the American society where corporations and even educational institutions have taken recourse to self-censorship as a way of protecting their economic ties with China.

When asked about recommendations to address this challenge posed by China, the issue of using reciprocity was foremost among the panelists suggestions. Gere talked about it by referring to the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act and its smart approach to responding to Chinas unfair practices.

This is a good, very rational, and systematic response, and we hope the State Department will implement it soon, as required by law now, Gere said.

Need for new tools

Overall, the discussion that followed the panelists opening statements focused on the need to identify new tools for the US government to use to push back against Chinas censorship, reduce reliance on Chinas manufacturingincluding in the pharmaceutical industryand, at the same time, protect the economic interest of US companies that are shut down or severely restricted from accessing the Chinese market in critical industries like the internet and the media.

Questions and comments from Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., highlighted the challenges posed by the interconnectedness of the US and Chinese economies, but also the need for the US to start thinking outside the box to craft policies and remedies that effectively protect both its interests and values.

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US Senate Finance Subcommittee hearing highlights need to review on China's censorship - Tibet Post International

Joe Lonsdale, The Washington Post

Our country has reached a boiling point. In just a few weeks, national narratives have escalated from seeking racial equality to defunding the police, toppling statues of men who abolished slavery and demands that social media companies censor speech on their platforms.

The recent corporate boycott of Facebook must be recognized for what it is: A craven capitulation to a mob that, left unopposed, would destroy free speech. More than 700 companies, including Unilever, Coca-Cola and Starbucks, have joined the #StopHateForProfit movement, led by a group of nonprofits that aims to curtail speech on social media platforms, especially Facebook.

The movement calls for suppressing harmful content or hateful activity such as vaccine misinformation, climate denialism, "dehumanizing language" and arguments for voter IDs.

Already, Facebook employs thousands of unaccountable flaggers who make subjective, ad hoc decisions on what constitutes acceptable speech. Facebook's chief operating officer noted this week that the company strives "constantly to get better and faster at enforcing" its policies against hate, and Mark Zuckerberg announced last month that Facebook would expand prohibitions against certain content in ads and label posts that violate policies. Yet if Facebook caves to this movement's demands, the company would have to install an Orwellian corporate bureaucracy of censors monitoring many types of speech.

Speech is often ugly. But a crown virtue of U.S. society is our commitment to free speech, including what some call hate speech. Social media platforms that aim to encourage speech have a duty to protect it as well.

I have plenty of concerns about Facebook, but I firmly support Zuckerberg's efforts to defend freedom of expression on the platform. Facebook, Twitter and other forums aspire to be, and are, public squares. The cowardice of corporate CEOs who have sacrificed our country's founding principles to appease an illiberal mob demanding to censor our 21st-century public squares is appalling.

Intellectual freedom is part of John Milton's "known rules of ancient liberty," which form the basic habitat of Western culture. This principle was beloved by Cicero, John Locke and the American founders. Tolerance of others' expression - no matter how offensive - is a precondition for democracy.

Globally, free speech is in retreat. And censorship - whether by foreign governments or social media platforms - is always political. This is the moment American CEOs should defend the noble institution of free speech with their reputations and treasure. Instead, many business leaders are selling out a sacred American liberty in an effort to signal virtue. The advertisers boycotting Facebook this month, and possibly longer, are no better than the illiberal mob they cower before.

Those who believe that speech should be moderated have fundamentally given up on the idea that people can come to the right decisions on their own, or that free speech works anywhere. The fact that people can say whatever they want in public squares and media outlets has, over the long run, helped make our country more open and tolerant, even when partisans used those "platforms" to make arguments as vile as the basest forms of discourse.

I'm all for a boycott that fights for justice. But corporations that have temporarily or otherwise recently stopped advertising on Facebook are boycotting because they think the company isn't censoring its users enough. Their statements imply that Americans are not to be trusted with intellectual freedom. This abandons the principle that a marketplace of ideas gradually tends toward truth and progress.

This country has traditionally stood with dissenters and devil's advocates. CEOs should stand with the rational majority who believe in First Amendment rights to offend others and vehemently disagree. Americans should not trade freedom for the supposed comfort of safe spaces. All who believe in First Amendment protections must stand firm and defend our liberal inheritance.

Only with courage can we cultivate the other classical virtues of justice, temperance and wisdom. Facing a radical mob takes courage. So does facing an HR department or other corporate officials who have carried the self-sure illiberalism of higher education into the private sector. It also takes courage to acknowledge the positive, hopeful and just aspects of the recent protests, and to ally in their fight for justice. But this boycott is wrong because censorship will never lead our society to justice.

John Stuart Mill wrote that "If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." Americans of all stripes are looking for leaders who can demonstrate courage. At a time when authoritarian countries are using technology to corral speech instead of liberate it, our leaders ought to blaze a different path. Do courageous business leaders remain? Who will speak for the American heritage of free and open debate? Our country's future hangs in the balance.

- - -

Joe Lonsdale is founder and partner at 8VC, a venture capital firm. Technology companies he has started include Palantir, Addepar and OpenGov.

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The Facebook boycott is illiberal. Who has the courage to oppose it? - Thehour.com

Laura Helena Castillo is one of the founders of "Bus TV". She told our team how they came up with the idea to keep on broadcasting local news from their windows and balconies after La Cruz went into lockdown. Theyve started referring to the project as "La Ventana TV", which means Window TV. When lockdown began, at first, we were worried because weve always carried out our projects in the street, in close contact with people, and we had to stop it all. So, we decided to try and develop other activities that would allow us to respect social distancing measures.

We did our very first news bulletins from our windows in mid-May. We got this idea because we had seen how balconies had become a space for expression in Europe during lockdown, allowing contact with the rest of the world. People were singing, playing music and applauding

The very first window news bulletin was delivered in mid-May. In this video, you can hear someone saying, This afternoon, starting at 4pm, La Cruz TV will be broadcast from the balcony of our neighbor, Mrs. Rosa Elena Marrobo."

Then, Daro dresses up in an elegant outfit and reads the news bulletin into a microphone from one of the balconies in the neighborhood while Mariln films him [Editors note: even though these videos are never posted online]. Different people in the neighbourhood offer up their balconies. Weve also rented a speaker from one of the neighbours so that people in the neighbourhood can hear.

"Testing, hello, hello, testing La Cruz TV has a project during quarantaine thats called La Ventana TV", says Daro Chacn in this video.

"Today is May 16, 2020. Weve been in quarantaine for 61 days in Venezuela. Whats happening in La Cruz? The sale of proteins, vegetables in La Cruz were a major help for the community during quarantaine", says Daro Chacn in this video.

For the time being, weve only done three news bulletins from the windows. We had to stop everything for more than two weeks because a woman in the neighbourhood was suspected of having Covid-19. So we didnt want Daro or Mariln to take any risks. But wed like to do two televised news bulletins a week, which was our rhythm with La Cruz TV.

"Three balconies, three episodes of La Ventana TV"

The start of a televised news bulletin presented on a balcony.

These flyers provide information for La Cruz residents.

Article by Chlo Lauvergnier.

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Venezuelans defy censorship to broadcast their own news bulletins - from their balconies - FRANCE 24

On Tuesday, Harper's published what has become known as "the letter," a document cosigned by more than 150 artists, writers, and academics defending the broad principle of "the free exchange of information and ideas," which they refer to as "the lifeblood of a liberal society." It has sparked both praise and ridicule.

But more than anything, it's demonstrated why an honest debate, even a fight, over the value of free speech needs to be had.

The letter, a vaguely written, even anodyne statement that reads as if it's been stepped on by too many writers, opens with a message of support for the recent protests and "wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society." It then laments the "swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought" that the cosigners argue is taking place in institutions ranging from academia to media to everyday workplaces. Its main thesis appears to be "We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences."

There are those who see free speech as a concept that benefits only the powerful, and then there are those staunch free-speech advocates myself among them who view free speech as the most effective tool available for marginalized voices; no meaningful positive social change could occur without it.

It took millennia to establish the norm that you can piss people off, especially the powerful, with your speech and it should generally be tolerated. If it's jettisoned in the name of a certain definition of justice, what happens at the next injustice? You can't use free speech to fight it anymore.

For some critics, the focus was on the letter's signatories who included the feminist icon Gloria Steinem, the socialist academic Noam Chomsky, and the jazz legend Wynton Marsalis and was spearheaded by the Black writer Thomas Chatterton Williams. Despite being cosigned by people who are diverse in race, gender, religion, sexuality, age, and politics, the number of wealthy, older, white cosigners nullified the letter's message for many.

Others pointed to certain signatories such as JK Rowling, the "Harry Potter" author who has recently made polarizing statements about transgender people, and the writer Jesse Singal, whose choice to write about people who stopped identifying as trans was vilified by some on the left. For some critics, the inclusion of such people automatically rendered the letter a moot point.

One signatory, the writer Jenny Boylan, apologized for having her name listed beside certain people (though she didn't name anyone). The Black writer Malcolm Gladwell tweeted in response: "I signed the Harpers letter because there were lots of people who also signed the Harpers letter whose views I disagreed with. I thought that was the point of the Harpers letter."

The most interesting criticism I came across was from Ken White, the civil-libertarian lawyer who also blogs and tweets as "Popehat." White is often my go-to legal-splainer on First Amendment issues, so when he criticized the letter, my ears perked up.

I spoke with White about the concept of the "preferred first speaker" conundrum. Put simply, it's the idea that there should be few limits on speech but substantial limits on the response to such speech.

"Sometimes I feel that criticisms of 'cancel culture' amount to an attempt to impose civility codes on the marketplace of ideas, sometimes by the same people who otherwise would be objecting to such civility codes applied to the first speaker," White told me.

He added: "Calling a group of people a 'mob' is a way to avoid addressing their argument. It deprives them of agency, assumes they are taking their position out of groupthink or rage rather than because of values, and implicitly suggests that their proposition is less credible because too many people are sharing it."

The socialist writer Freddie deBoer wrote Tuesday of some of the progressive responses to the letter: "You want to argue that free speech is bad, fine. You want to adopt a dominance politics that (you imagine) will result in you being the censor, fine. But just do that. Own that."

I'd agree. If you think that free speech has lost its value and we've reached the pinnacle of all human understanding and that the correct parameters of what may be said are now perfectly understood and must be locked in place for all time let's have that argument.

And for those who are free-speech absolutists, the right of free association remains a tenet of the value. That's a sometimes difficult circle to square, so specificity is necessary. Perhaps the argument is of course you CAN fire someone because they said something that offended a colleague, but don't make that an action of first resort or treat every instance of offense the same. After all, there are certainly people in workplaces offended by progressive speech, and no progressive would argue that the reflexive response should be that their job must be placed in jeopardy.

Take one the thorniest of political issues: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On one side a person can claim to feel unsafe by a colleague's support of a brutal occupier state. On the other, a person can claim to feel unsafe by a colleague's support of the anti-Semitic theocracy Hamas.

If this seems ridiculous, it's not.

Just last month, David Shor, a progressive election data analyst, tweeted a link to a Black Princeton University professor's study that theorized rioting helped Republicans win elections. Shor was promptly dismissed from his job at Civis Analytics after colleagues expressed their offense at the tweet.

The company has every right to fire an at-will employee, especially if they'd rather not deal with the hassle. But what justice was served by Shor's firing? The only lesson to be gleaned is that data analysts need to be very careful about what data they tweet. Incidents like this are part of what inspired the Harper's letter.

To those who presume that denying a culture of open debate and free expression will lead to a permanent entrenchment of correct ideas, I'd like to know who sets the rules. Who is pure enough to have lived a life with no problematic associations or regrettable past expressions of speech?

Because if you want to make the case that free speech has outlived its use, let's be clear about the society you envision after it's been done away with.

For many of the letter's signatories, the concept of censorship is not in the abstract.

Steinem spent her life protesting and agitating in the fight for women's rights. She knows what it is to express deeply unpopular speech and to have it censored by authorities. Chomsky, whose left-wing social-justice credibility is hard to seriously challenge, is a longtime critic of both government and corporate censorship, and he's been a victim of both.

Garry Kasparov, the chess champion and Russian dissident, offended the political orthodoxy of his country and now lives under permanent threat of assassination. So does the celebrated author Salman Rushdie, because he wrote a book that angered a theocracy over three decades ago.

Jonathan Rauch, a gay writer who was a signatory of the letter, wrote in 2014 of a US Army Map Service astronomer named Frank Kameny, who was fired from his government job in the 1950s explicitly because he was gay.

Raugh wrote: "As of 1954, homosexuals not only lived in constant fear of being fired, shamed, and beaten or killed; we were also prevented by our government from making our case. To practice same-sex love was a crime; but even to praise it was 'cheap pornography.' Something else I often find called on to emphasize to young people, at a time when college speech codes are usually justified as protecting minority rights, is that turnabout is not fair play. The problem is not that the bad guys were in charge of the speech rules in 1954, whereas the good guys are in charge now. The problem is that majorities, politicians and bureaucrats are very unreliable judges of minorities' interests."

Kameny fought the government over his firing all the way to the Supreme Court, and ultimately lost. But beginning a decade before the Stonewall riots and for the rest of his life, he challenged the government through his writing and activism, which was possible only because of the First Amendment, and the right to cause offense through speech. In 2009, late in his life, the Obama administration officially apologized for his firing. Four years after his death, same-sex marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court.

If the presidency of Donald Trump has taught us anything, it's that certain liberal norms must be defended, if only to keep people with tyrannical instincts like him from determining what should and shouldn't be acceptable forms of expression. If the worst could happen and it always could the right to express unpopular opinions is the best weapon available to beat back the tyrant.

This doesn't mean speech shouldn't come without consequences, or that criticism is necessarily "censorship," or that anyone is entitled to a job even if they've become more trouble to their employer than they are worth.

But for the unconvinced, I would ask for some consideration that the principles of open debate and free expression are not outdated reactionary platitudes.

And for those who believe free speech has outlived its purpose, I would ask for an upfront conversation about what comes next.

Read the rest here:

The Harper's 'letter' proves we need to have a serious talk about free speech - Business Insider - Business Insider

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) on Wednesday suspended a network of social media accounts it said were used to spread divisive political messages online by employees of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and two of his sons.

FILE PHOTO: Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro looks on after a meeting at the Ministry of Defense headquarters, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Brasilia, Brazil, May 29 2020. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

The company said that despite efforts to disguise who was behind the activity, it had found links to the staff of two Brazilian lawmakers, as well as the president and his sons, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro.

Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebooks head of cybersecurity policy, said the accounts were removed for using fake personas and other types of coordinated inauthentic behaviour which violated the companys rules.

He said there was no evidence the politicians themselves had operated the accounts. What we can prove is that employees of those offices are engaged on our platforms in this type of behaviour, he told Reuters ahead of the announcement on the companys blog. (bit.ly/2Cf0dMA)

Facebook said it has also suspended three other networks on Wednesday, including one it attributed to Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Brazilian presidents office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senator Flavio Bolsonaro said his fathers government was elected with strong popular backing and has thousands of supporters on social media.

As far as we know, they are all free and independent, he said in a statement. Based on Facebooks report, its impossible to evaluate what kind of profile was blocked and whether the platform crossed the line into censorship.

The allegations by Facebook add to a burgeoning political crisis in Brazil, where Bolsonaros sons and supporters have been accused of running a coordinated online campaign to smear the presidents opponents.

The accusations have spurred a congressional inquiry and a separate Supreme Court investigation into so-called fake news attacks on the countrys judiciary, which led to police raids in May on the homes and offices of Bolsonaro allies.

Bolsonaro, who is also under mounting criticism over his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, has said the courts investigation is unconstitutional and risks establishing censorship in Brazil by policing what people can say online.

Facebook has come under increasing pressure in recent weeks to better police how political groups use its platform. Hundreds of advertisers have joined a boycott aimed at forcing the company to block hate speech on its site, and multiple employees walked out last month over CEO Mark Zuckerbergs decision not to challenge inflammatory posts Trump.

Gleicher said his team had identified and suspended more than 80 accounts on Facebook and its photo-sharing site, Instagram, as part of the Brazilian network. The accounts had amassed 1.8 million followers, he said, and some dated back to 2018.

Researchers at the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab, who spent a week analysing the activity identified by Facebook, said they had found five current and former political staffers who registered and operated the accounts.

Some of those accounts posed as fake Brazilians and news outlets to spread hyper-partisan views supporting Bolsonaro and attacking his critics, said researcher Luiza Bandeira. Their targets included opposition lawmakers, former ministers and members of Brazils Supreme Court.

More recently, the accounts also amplified Bolsonaros claims that the risks of the coronavirus pandemic are exaggerated. The disease has killed more than 66,000 people in Brazil and Bolsonaro himself tested positive this week.

We have known for a long time that when people disagree with Bolsonaro they are targeted by this machine that uses online disinformation to mock and discredit them, said Bandeira.

So knowing now that part of these attacks are coming from people directly related to the Bolsonaro family, that explains a lot.

Reporting by Jack Stubbs in London and Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle in Brasilia; Editing by Lisa Shumaker

See more here:

Facebook suspends disinformation network tied to staff of Brazil's Bolsonaro - Reuters