Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

Many experts fear uncivil and manipulative behaviors on the internet will persist and may get worse. This will lead to a splintering of social media into AI-patrolled and regulated safe spaces separated from free-for-all zones. Some worry this will hurt the open exchange of ideas and compromise privacy

The internet supports a global ecosystem of social interaction. Modern life revolves around the network, with its status updates, news feeds, comment chains, political advocacy, omnipresent reviews, rankings and ratings. For its first few decades, this connected world was idealized as an unfettered civic forum: a space where disparate views, ideas and conversations could constructively converge. Its creators were inspired by the optimism underlying Stuart Brands WELL in 1985, Tim Berners-Lees World Wide Web and Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlows 1996 Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. They expected the internet to create a level playing field for information sharing and communal activity among individuals, businesses, other organizations and government actors.

One of the biggest challenges will be finding an appropriate balance between protecting anonymity and enforcing consequences for the abusive behavior that has been allowed to characterize online discussions for far too long. Bailey Poland

Since the early 2000s, the wider diffusion of the network, the dawn of Web 2.0 and social medias increasingly influential impacts, and the maturation of strategic uses of online platforms to influence the public for economic and political gain have altered discourse. In recent years, prominent internet analysts and the public at large have expressed increasing concerns that the content, tone and intent of online interactions have undergone an evolution that threatens its future and theirs. Events and discussions unfolding over the past year highlight the struggles ahead. Among them:

To illuminate current attitudes about the potential impacts of online social interaction over the next decade, Pew Research Center and Elon Universitys Imagining the Internet Center conducted a large-scale canvassing of technology experts, scholars, corporate practitioners and government leaders. Some 1,537 responded to this effort between July 1 and Aug. 12, 2016 (prior to the late-2016 revelations about potential manipulation of public opinion via hacking of social media). They were asked:

In the next decade, will public discourse online become more or less shaped by bad actors, harassment, trolls, and an overall tone of griping, distrust, and disgust?

In response to this question, 42% of respondents indicated that they expect no major changein online social climate in the coming decade and 39% said they expect the online future will be more shaped by negative activities. Those who said they expect the internet to be less shaped by harassment, trolling and distrust were in the minority. Some 19% said this. Respondents were asked to elaborate on how they anticipate online interaction progressing over the next decade. (See About this canvassing of experts for further details about the limits of this sample.)

Participants were also asked to explain their answers in a written elaboration and asked to consider the following prompts: 1) How do you expect social media and digital commentary will evolve in the coming decade? 2) Do you think we will see a widespread demand for technological systems or solutions that encourage more inclusive online interactions? 3) What do you think will happen to free speech? And 4) What might be the consequences for anonymity and privacy?

While respondents expressed a range of opinions from deep concern to disappointment to resignation to optimism, most agreed that people at their best and their worst are empowered by networked communication technologies. Some said the flame wars and strategic manipulation of the zeitgeist might just be getting started if technological and human solutions are not put in place to bolster diverse civil discourse.

A number of respondents predicted online reputation systems and much better security and moderation solutions will become near ubiquitous in the future, making it increasingly difficult for bad actors to act out disruptively. Some expressed concerns that such systems especially those that remove the ability to participate anonymously online will result in an altered power dynamic between government/state-level actors, the elites and regular citizens.

Anonymity, a key affordance of the early internet, is an element that many in this canvassing attributed to enabling bad behavior and facilitating uncivil discourse in shared online spaces. The purging of user anonymity is seen as possibly leading to a more inclusive online environment and also setting the stage for governments and dominant institutions to even more freely employ surveillance tools to monitor citizens, suppress free speech and shape social debate.

Most experts predicted that the builders of open social spaces on global communications networks will find it difficult to support positive change in cleaning up the real-time exchange of information and sharing of diverse ideologies over the next decade, as millions more people around the world become connected for the first time and among the billions already online are many who compete in an arms race of sorts to hack and subvert corrective systems.

Those who believe the problems of trolling and other toxic behaviors can be solved say the cure might also be quite damaging. One of the biggest challenges will be finding an appropriate balance between protecting anonymity and enforcing consequences for the abusive behavior that has been allowed to characterize online discussions for far too long, explained expert respondent Bailey Poland, author of Haters: Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online.

The majority in this canvassing were sympathetic to those abused or misled in the current online environment while expressing concerns that the most likely solutions will allow governments and big businesses to employ surveillance systems that monitor citizens, suppress free speech and shape discourse via algorithms, allowing those who write the algorithms to sculpt civil debate.

Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst at Altimeter Group, walked through a future scenario of tit-for-tat, action-reaction that ends in what she calls a Potemkin internet. She wrote: In the next several years we will see an increase in the type and volume of bad behavior online, mostly because there will be a corresponding increase in digital activity. Cyberattacks, doxing, and trolling will continue, while social platforms, security experts, ethicists, and others will wrangle over the best ways to balance security and privacy, freedom of speech, and user protections. A great deal of this will happen in public view. The more worrisome possibility is that privacy and safety advocates, in an effort to create a more safe and equal internet, will push bad actors into more-hidden channels such as Tor. Of course, this is already happening, just out of sight of most of us. The worst outcome is that we end up with a kind of Potemkin internet in which everything looks reasonably bright and sunny, which hides a more troubling and less transparent reality.

One other point of context for this non-representative sample of a particular population: While the question we posed was not necessarily aimed at getting peoples views about the role of political material in online social spaces, it inevitably drew commentary along those lines because this survey was fielded in the midst of a bitter, intense election in the United States where one of the candidates, in particular, was a provocative user of Twitter.

Most participants in this canvassing wrote detailed elaborations explaining their positions. Their well-considered comments provide insights about hopeful and concerning trends. They were allowed to respond anonymously, and many chose to do so.

These findings do not represent all points of view possible, but they do reveal a wide range of striking observations. Respondents collectively articulated four key themes that are introduced and briefly explained below and then expanded upon in more-detailed sections.

The following section presents a brief overview of the most evident themes extracted from the written responses, including a small selection of representative quotes supporting each point. Some responses are lightly edited for style or due to length.

While some respondents saw issues with uncivil behavior online on somewhat of a plateau at the time of this canvassing in the summer of 2016 and a few expect solutions will cut hate speech, misinformation and manipulation, the vast majority shared at least some concerns that things could get worse, thus two of the four overarching themes of this report start with the phrase, Things will stay bad.

The individuals voice has a much higher perceived value than it has in the past. As a result, there are more people who will complain online in an attempt to get attention, sympathy, or retribution. Anonymous software engineer

A number of expert respondents observed that negative online discourse is just the latest example of the many ways humans have exercised social vitriol for millennia. Jerry Michalski, founder at REX, wrote, I would very much love to believe that discourse will improve over the next decade, but I fear the forces making it worse havent played out at all yet. After all, it took us almost 70 years to mandate seatbelts. And were not uniformly wise about how to conduct dependable online conversations, never mind debates on difficult subjects. In that long arc of history that bends toward justice, particularly given our accelerated times, I do think we figure this out. But not within the decade.

Vint Cerf, Internet Hall of Fame member, Google vice president and co-inventor of the Internet Protocol, summarized some of the harmful effects of disruptive discourse:

The internet is threatened with fragmentation, he wrote. People feel free to make unsupported claims, assertions, and accusations in online media. As things now stand, people are attracted to forums that align with their thinking, leading to an echo effect. This self-reinforcement has some of the elements of mob (flash-crowd) behavior. Bad behavior is somehow condoned because everyone is doing it. It is hard to see where this phenomenon may be heading. Social media bring every bad event to our attention, making us feel as if they all happened in our back yards leading to an overall sense of unease. The combination of bias-reinforcing enclaves and global access to bad actions seems like a toxic mix. It is not clear whether there is a way to counter-balance their socially harmful effects.

An anonymous respondent commented, The tone of discourse online is dictated by fundamental human psychology and will not easily be changed. This statement reflects the attitude of expert internet technologists, researchers and pundits, most of whom agree that it is the people using the network, not the network, that is the root of the problem.

Paul Jones, clinical professor and director of ibiblio.org at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, commented, The id unbound from the monitoring and control by the superego is both the originator of communication and the nemesis of understanding and civility.

John Cato, a senior software engineer, wrote, Trolling for arguments has been an internet tradition since Usenet. Some services may be able to mitigate the problem slightly by forcing people to use their real identities, but wherever you have anonymity you will have people who are there just to make other people angry.

And an anonymous software engineer explained why the usual level of human incivility has been magnified by the internet, noting, The individuals voice has a much higher perceived value than it has in the past. As a result, there are more people who will complain online in an attempt to get attention, sympathy, or retribution.

Michael Kleeman, formerly with the Boston Consulting Group, Arthur D. Little and Sprint, now senior fellow at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, San Diego, explained: Historically, communities of practice and conversation had other, often physical, linkages that created norms of behavior. And actors would normally be identified, not anonymous. Increased anonymity coupled with an increase in less-than-informed input, with no responsibility by the actors, has tended and will continue to create less open and honest conversations and more one-sided and negative activities.

Trolls now know that their methods are effective and carry only minimal chance of social stigma and essentially no other punishment. Anonymous respondent

An expert respondent who chose not to be identified commented, People are snarky and awful online in large part because they can be anonymous. And another such respondent wrote, Trolls now know that their methods are effective and carry only minimal chance of social stigma and essentially no other punishment. If Gamergate can harass and dox any woman with an opinion and experience no punishment as a result, how can things get better?

Anonymously, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) commented, We see a dark current of people who equate free speech with the right to say anything, even hate speech, even speech that does not sync with respected research findings. They find in unmediated technology a place where their opinions can have a multiplier effect, where they become the elites.

Some leading participants in this canvassing said the tone of discourse will worsen in the next decade due to inequities and prejudice, noting wealth disparity, the hollowing out of the middle class, and homophily (the tendency of people to bond with those similar to themselves and thus also at times to shun those seen as the other).

Unfortunately, I see the present prevalence of trolling as an expression of a broader societal trend across many developed nations, towards belligerent factionalism in public debate, with particular attacks directed at women as well as ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. Axel Bruns

Cory Doctorow, writer, computer science activist-in-residence at MIT Media Lab and co-owner of Boing Boing, offered a bleak assessment, writing, Thomas Piketty, etc., have correctly predicted that we are in an era of greater social instability created by greater wealth disparity which can only be solved through either the wealthy collectively opting for a redistributive solution (which feels unlikely) or everyone else compelling redistribution (which feels messy, unstable, and potentially violent). The internet is the natural battleground for whatever breaking point we reach to play out, and its also a useful surveillance, control, and propaganda tool for monied people hoping to forestall a redistributive future. The Chinese internet playbook the 50c army, masses of astroturfers, libel campaigns against enemies of the state, paranoid war-on-terror rhetoric has become the playbook of all states, to some extent (see, e.g., the HB Gary leak that revealed U.S. Air Force was putting out procurement tenders for persona management software that allowed their operatives to control up to 20 distinct online identities, each). That will create even more inflammatory dialogue, flamewars, polarized debates, etc.

And an anonymous professor at MIT remarked, Traditional elites have lost their credibility because they have become associated with income inequality and social injustice. This dynamic has to shift before online life can play a livelier part in the life of the polity. I believe that it will, but slowly.

Axel Bruns, a professor at the Queensland University of Technologys Digital Media Research Centre, said, Unfortunately, I see the present prevalence of trolling as an expression of a broader societal trend across many developed nations, towards belligerent factionalism in public debate, with particular attacks directed at women as well as ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities.

As billions more people are connected online and technologies such as AI chatbots, the Internet of Things, and virtual and augmented reality continue to mature, complexity is always on the rise. Some respondents said well-intentioned attempts to raise the level of discourse are less likely to succeed in a rapidly changing and widening information environment.

As more people get internet access and especially smartphones, which allow people to connect 24/7 there will be increased opportunities for bad behavior. Jessica Vitak

Matt Hamblen, senior editor at Computerworld, commented, [By 2026] social media and other forms of discourse will include all kinds of actors who had no voice in the past; these include terrorists, critics of all kinds of products and art forms, amateur political pundits, and more.

An anonymous respondent wrote, Bad actors will have means to do more, and more significant bad actors will be automated as bots are funded in extra-statial ways to do more damage because people are profiting from this.

Jessica Vitak, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, commented, Social medias affordances, including increased visibility and persistence of content, amplify the volume of negative commentary. As more people get internet access and especially smartphones, which allow people to connect 24/7 there will be increased opportunities for bad behavior.

Bryan Alexander, president of Bryan Alexander Consulting, added, The number of venues will rise with the expansion of the Internet of Things and when consumer-production tools become available for virtual and mixed reality.

Many respondents said power dynamics push trolling along. The business model of social media platforms is driven by advertising revenues generated by engaged platform users. The more raucous and incendiary the material, at times, the more income a site generates. The more contentious a political conflict is, the more likely it is to be an attention getter. Online forums lend themselves to ever-more hostile arguments.

Frank Pasquale, professor of law at the University of Maryland and author of Black Box Society, commented, The major internet platforms are driven by a profit motive. Very often, hate, anxiety and anger drive participation with the platform. Whatever behavior increases ad revenue will not only be permitted, but encouraged, excepting of course some egregious cases.

Its a brawl, a forum for rage and outrage. The more we come back, the more money they make off of ads and data about us. So the shouting match goes on. Andrew Nachison

Kate Crawford, a well-known internet researcher studying how people engage with networked technologies, observed, Distrust and trolling is happening at the highest levels of political debate, and the lowest. The Overton Window has been widened considerably by the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, and not in a good way. We have heard presidential candidates speak of banning Muslims from entering the country, asking foreign powers to hack former White House officials, retweeting neo-Nazis. Trolling is a mainstream form of political discourse.

Andrew Nachison, founder at We Media, said, Its a brawl, a forum for rage and outrage. Its also dominated social media platforms on the one hand and content producers on the other that collude and optimize for quantity over quality. Facebook adjusts its algorithm to provide a kind of quality relevance for individuals. But thats really a ruse to optimize for quantity. The more we come back, the more money they make off of ads and data about us. So the shouting match goes on. I dont know that prevalence of harassment and bad actors will change its already bad but if the overall tone is lousy, if the culture tilts negative, if political leaders popularize hate, then theres good reason to think all of that will dominate the digital debate as well.

Several of the expert respondents said because algorithmic solutions tend to reward that which keeps us agitated, it is especially damaging that the pre-internet news organizations that once employed fairly objective and well-trained (if not well-paid) armies of arbiters as democratic shapers of the defining climate of social and political discourse have fallen out of favor, replaced by creators of clickbait headlines read and shared by short-attention-span social sharers.

It is in the interest of the paid-for media and most political groups to continue to encourage echo-chamber thinking and to consider pragmatism and compromise as things to be discouraged. David Durant

David Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT and Internet Hall of Famer commented that he worries over the loss of character in the internet community. It is possible, with attention to the details of design that lead to good social behavior, to produce applications that better regulate negative behavior, he wrote. However, it is not clear what actor has the motivation to design and introduce such tools. The application space on the internet today is shaped by large commercial actors, and their goals are profit-seeking, not the creation of a better commons. I do not see tools for public discourse being good money makers, so we are coming to a fork in the road either a new class of actor emerges with a different set of motivations, one that is prepared to build and sustain a new generation of tools, or I fear the overall character of discourse will decline.

An anonymous principal security consultant wrote, As long as success and in the current climate, profit as a common proxy for success is determined by metrics that can be easily improved by throwing users under the bus, places that run public areas online will continue to do just that.

Steven Waldman, founder and CEO of LifePosts, said, It certainly sounds noble to say the internet has democratized public opinion. But its now clear: It has given voice to those who had been voiceless because they were oppressed minorities and to those who were voiceless because they are crackpots. It may not necessarily be bad actors i.e., racists, misogynists, etc. who win the day, but I do fear it will be the more strident. I suspect there will be ventures geared toward counter-programming against this, since many people are uncomfortable with it. But venture-backed tech companies have a huge bias toward algorithmic solutions that have tended to reward that which keeps us agitated. Very few media companies now have staff dedicated to guiding conversations online.

John Anderson, director of journalism and media studies at Brooklyn College, wrote, The continuing diminution of what Cass Sunstein once called general-interest intermediaries such as newspapers, network television, etc. means we have reached a point in our society where wildly different versions of reality can be chosen and customized by people to fit their existing ideological and other biases. In such an environment there is little hope for collaborative dialogue and consensus.

David Durant, a business analyst at U.K. Government Digital Service, argued, It is in the interest of the paid-for media and most political groups to continue to encourage echo-chamber thinking and to consider pragmatism and compromise as things to be discouraged. While this trend continues, the ability for serious civilized conversations about many topics will remain very hard to achieve.

The weaponization of social media and capture of online belief systems, also known as narratives, emerged from obscurity in 2016 due to the perceived impact of social media uses by terror organizations and political factions. Accusations of Russian influence via social media on the U.S. presidential election brought to public view the ways in which strategists of all stripes are endeavoring to influence people through the sharing of often false or misleading stories, photos and videos. Fake news moved to the forefront of ongoing discussions about the displacement of traditional media by social platforms. Earlier, in the summer of 2016, participants in this canvassing submitted concerns about misinformation in online discourse creating distorted views.

Theres money, power, and geopolitical stability at stake now, its not a mere matter of personal grumpiness from trolls. Anonymous respondent

Anonymously, a futurist, writer, and author at Wired, explained, New levels of cyberspace sovereignty and heavy-duty state and non-state actors are involved; theres money, power, and geopolitical stability at stake now, its not a mere matter of personal grumpiness from trolls.

Karen Blackmore, a lecturer in IT at the University of Newcastle, wrote, Misinformation and anti-social networking are degrading our ability to debate and engage in online discourse. When opinions based on misinformation are given the same weight as those of experts and propelled to create online activity, we tread a dangerous path. Online social behaviour, without community-imposed guidelines, is subject to many potentially negative forces. In particular, social online communities such as Facebook also function as marketing tools, where sensationalism is widely employed and community members who view this dialogue as their news source gain a very distorted view of current events and community views on issues. This is exacerbated with social network and search engine algorithms effectively sorting what people see to reinforce worldviews.

Laurent Schpbach, a neuropsychologist at University Hospital in Zurich, focused his entire response about negative tone online on burgeoning acts of economic and political manipulation, writing, The reason it will probably get worse is that companies and governments are starting to realise that they can influence peoples opinions that way. And these entities sure know how to circumvent any protection in place. Russian troll armies are a good example of something that will become more and more common in the future.

David Wuertele, a software engineer at Tesla Motors, commented, Unfortunately, most people are easily manipulated by fear. Negative activities on the internet will exploit those fears, and disproportionate responses will also attempt to exploit those fears. Soon, everyone will have to take off their shoes and endure a cavity search before boarding the internet.

Most respondents said it is likely that the coming decade will see a widespread move to more-secure services, applications, and platforms and more robust user-identification policies. Some said people born into the social media age will adapt. Some predict that more online systems will require clear identification of participants. This means that the online social forums could splinter into various formats, some of which are highly protected and monitored and others which could retain the free-for-all character of todays platforms.

Some experts in this canvassing say progress is already being made on some fronts toward better technological and human solutions.

The future Web will give people much better ways to control the information that they receive, which will ultimately make problems like trolling manageable. David Karger

Galen Hunt, a research manager at Microsoft Research NExT, replied, As language-processing technology develops, technology will help us identify and remove bad actors, harassment, and trolls from accredited public discourse.

Stowe Boyd, chief researcher at Gigaom, observed, I anticipate that AIs will be developed that will rapidly decrease the impact of trolls. Free speech will remain possible, although AI filtering will make a major dent on how views are expressed, and hate speech will be blocked.

Marina Gorbis, executive director at the Institute for the Future, added, I expect we will develop more social bots and algorithmic filters that would weed out the some of the trolls and hateful speech. I expect we will create bots that would promote beneficial connections and potentially insert context-specific data/facts/stories that would benefit more positive discourse. Of course, any filters and algorithms will create issues around what is being filtered out and what values are embedded in algorithms.

Jean Russell of Thrivable Futures wrote, First, conversations can have better containers that filter for real people who consistently act with decency. Second, software is getting better and more nuanced in sentiment analysis, making it easier for software to augment our filtering out of trolls. Third, we are at peak identity crisis and a new wave of people want to cross the gap in dialogue to connect with others before the consequences of being tribal get worse (Brexit, Trump, etc.).

David Karger, a professor of computer science at MIT, said, My own research group is exploring several novel directions in digital commentary. In the not too distant future all this work will yield results. Trolling, doxxing, echo chambers, click-bait, and other problems can be solved. We will be able to ascribe sources and track provenance in order to increase the accuracy and trustworthiness of information online. We will create tools that increase peoples awareness of opinions differing from their own and support conversations with and learning from people who hold those opinions. The future Web will give people much better ways to control the information that they receive, which will ultimately make problems like trolling manageable (trolls will be able to say what they want, but few will be listening).

Technology will mediate who and what we see online more and more, so that we are drawn more toward communities with similar interests than those who are dissimilar. Lindsay Kenzig

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google and other platform providers already shape and thus limit what the public views via the implementation of algorithms. As people have become disenchanted with uncivil discourse open platforms they stop using them or close their accounts, sometimes moving to smaller online communities of people with similar needs or ideologies. Some experts expect that these trends will continue and even more partitions, divisions and exclusions may emerge as measures are taken to clean things up. For instance, it is expected that the capabilities of AI-based bots dispatched to assist with information sorting, security, and regulation of the tone and content of discourse will continue to be refined.

Lindsay Kenzig, a senior design researcher, said, Technology will mediate who and what we see online more and more, so that we are drawn more toward communities with similar interests than those who are dissimilar. There will still be some places where you can find those with whom to argue, but they will be more concentrated into only a few locations than they are now.

Valerie Bock, of VCB Consulting, commented, Spaces where people must post under their real names and where they interact with people with whom they have multiple bonds regularly have a higher quality of discourse. In response to this reality, well see some consolidation as it becomes easier to shape commercial interactive spaces to the desired audience. There will be free-for-all spaces and more-tightly-moderated walled gardens, depending on the sponsors strategic goals. There will also be private spaces maintained by individuals and groups for specific purposes.

Lisa Heinz, a doctoral student at Ohio University, commented, Humanitys reaction to negative forces will likely contribute more to the ever-narrowing filter bubble, which will continue to create an online environment that lacks inclusivity by its exclusion of opposing viewpoints. An increased demand for systemic internet-based AI will create bots that will begin to interact as proxies for the humans that train them with humans online in real-time and with what would be recognized as conversational language, not the word-parroting bot behavior we see on Twitter now. When this happens, we will see bots become part of the filter bubble phenomenon as a sort of mental bodyguard that prevents an intrusion of people and conversations to which individuals want no part. The unfortunate aspect of this iteration of the filter bubble means that while free speech itself will not be affected, people will project their voices into the chasm, but few will hear them.

Bob Frankston, internet pioneer and software innovator, wrote, I see negative activities having an effect but the effect will likely be from communities that shield themselves from the larger world. Were still working out how to form and scale communities.

The expert comments in response to this canvassing were recorded in the summer of 2016; by early 2017, after many events (Brexit, the U.S. election, others mentioned earlier in this report) surfaced concerns about civil discourse, misinformation and impacts on democracy, an acceleration of activity tied to solutions emerged. Facebook, Twitter and Google announced some new efforts toward technological approaches; many conversations about creating new methods of support for public affairs journalism began to be undertaken; and consumer bubble-busting tools including Outside Your Bubble and Escape Your Bubble were introduced.

Some participants in this canvassing said they expect the already-existing continuous arms race dynamic will expand, as some people create and apply new measures to ride herd over online discourse while others constantly endeavor to thwart them.

Cathy Davidson, founding director of the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said, Were in a spy vs. spy internet world where the faster that hackers and trolls attack, the faster companies (Mozilla, thank you!) plus for-profits come up with ways to protect against them and then the hackers develop new strategies against those protections, and so it goes. I dont see that ending. I would not be surprised at more publicity in the future, as a form of cyber-terror. Thats different from trolls, more geo-politically orchestrated to force a national or multinational response. That is terrifying if we do not have sound, smart, calm leadership.

Sam Anderson, coordinator of instructional design at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said, It will be an arms race between companies and communities that begin to realize (as some online games companies like Riot have) that toxic online communities will lower their long-term viability and potential for growth. This will war with incentives for short-term gains that can arise out of bursts of angry or sectarian activity (Twitters character limit inhibits nuance, which increases reaction and response).

A share of respondents said greater regulation of speech and technological solutions to curb harassment and trolling will result in more surveillance, censorship and cloistered communities. They worry this will change peoples sharing behaviors online, limit exposure to diverse ideas and challenge freedom.

While several respondents indicated that there is no longer a chance of anonymity online, many say privacy and choice are still options, and they should be protected.

Terrorism and harassment by trolls will be presented as the excuses, but the effect will be dangerous for democracy. Richard Stallman

Longtime internet civil libertarian Richard Stallman, Internet Hall of Fame member and president of the Free Software Foundation, spoke to this fear. He predicted, Surveillance and censorship will become more systematic, even in supposedly free countries such as the U.S. Terrorism and harassment by trolls will be presented as the excuses, but the effect will be dangerous for democracy.

Rebecca MacKinnon, director of Ranking Digital Rights at New America, wrote, Im very concerned about the future of free speech given current trends. The demands for governments and companies to censor and monitor internet users are coming from an increasingly diverse set of actors with very legitimate concerns about safety and security, as well as concerns about whether civil discourse is becoming so poisoned as to make rational governance based on actual facts impossible. Im increasingly inclined to think that the solutions, if they ever come about, will be human/social/political/cultural and not technical.

James Kalin of Virtually Green wrote, Surveillance capitalism is increasingly grabbing and mining data on everything that anyone says, does, or buys online. The growing use of machine learning processing of the data will drive ever more subtle and pervasive manipulation of our purchasing, politics, cultural attributes, and general behavior. On top of this, the data is being stolen routinely by bad actors who will also be using machine learning processing to steal or destroy things we value as individuals: our identities, privacy, money, reputations, property, elections, you name it. I see a backlash brewing, with people abandoning public forums and social network sites in favor of intensely private black forums and networks.

A number of respondents said they expect governments or other authorities will begin implementing regulation or other reforms to address these issues, most indicating that the competitive instincts of platform providers do not work in favor of the implementation of appropriate remedies without some incentive.

My fear is that because of the virtually unlimited opportunities for negative use of social media globally we will experience a rising worldwide demand for restrictive regulation. Paula Hooper Mayhew

Michael Rogers, author and futurist at Practical Futurist, predicted governments will assume control over identifying internet users. He observed, I expect there will be a move toward firm identities even legal identities issued by nations for most users of the Web. There will as a result be public discussion forums in which it is impossible to be anonymous. There would still be anonymity available, just as there is in the real world today. But there would be online activities in which anonymity was not permitted. Clearly this could have negative free-speech impacts in totalitarian countries but, again, there would still be alternatives for anonymity.

Paula Hooper Mayhew, a professor of humanities at Fairleigh Dickinson University, commented, My fear is that because of the virtually unlimited opportunities for negative use of social media globally we will experience a rising worldwide demand for restrictive regulation. This response may work against support of free speech in the U.S.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), wrote, The regulation of online communications is a natural response to the identification of real problems, the maturing of the industry, and the increasing expertise of government regulators.

John Markoff, senior writer at The New York Times, commented, There is growing evidence that that the Net is a polarizing force in the world. I dont believe to completely understand the dynamic, but my surmise is that it is actually building more walls than it is tearing down.

Marcus Foth, a professor at Queensland University of Technology, said, Public discourse online will become less shaped by bad actors because the majority of interactions will take place inside walled gardens. Social media platforms hosted by corporations such as Facebook and Twitter use algorithms to filter, select, and curate content. With less anonymity and less diversity, the two biggest problems of the Web 1.0 era have been solved from a commercial perspective: fewer trolls who can hide behind anonymity. Yet, what are we losing in the process? Algorithmic culture creates filter bubbles, which risk an opinion polarisation inside echo chambers.

Emily Shaw, a U.S. civic technologies researcher for mySociety, predicted, Since social networks are the most likely future direction for public discourse, a million (self)-walled gardens are more likely to be the outcome than is an increase in hostility, because thats whats more commercially profitable.

Experts predict increased oversight and surveillance, left unchecked, could lead to dominant institutions and actors using their power to suppress alternative news sources, censor ideas, track individuals, and selectively block network access. This, in turn, could mean publics might never know what they are missing out on, since information will be filtered, removed, or concealed.

The fairness and freedom of the internets early days are gone. Now its run by big data, Big Brother, and big profits. Thorlaug Agustsdottir

Thorlaug Agustsdottir of Icelands Pirate Party, said, Monitoring is and will be a massive problem, with increased government control and abuse. The fairness and freedom of the internets early days are gone. Now its run by big data, Big Brother, and big profits. Anonymity is a myth, it only exists for end-users who lack lookup resources.

Joe McNamee, executive director at European Digital Rights, said, In the context of a political environment where deregulation has reached the status of ideology, it is easy for governments to demand that social media companies do more to regulate everything that happens online. We see this with the European Unions code of conduct with social media companies. This privatisation of regulation of free speech (in a context of huge, disproportionate, asymmetrical power due to the data stored and the financial reserves of such companies) raises existential questions for the functioning of healthy democracies.

Randy Bush, Internet Hall of Fame member and research fellow at Internet Initiative Japan, wrote, Between troll attacks, chilling effects of government surveillance and censorship, etc., the internet is becoming narrower every day.

Dan York, senior content strategist at the Internet Society, wrote, Unfortunately, we are in for a period where the negative activities may outshine the positive activities until new social norms can develop that push back against the negativity. It is far too easy right now for anyone to launch a large-scale public negative attack on someone through social media and other channels and often to do so anonymously (or hiding behind bogus names). This then can be picked up by others and spread. The mob mentality can be easily fed, and there is little fact-checking or source-checking these days before people spread information and links through social media. I think this will cause some governments to want to step in to protect citizens and thereby potentially endanger both free speech and privacy.

This section features responses by several more of the many top analysts who participated in this canvassing. Following this wide-ranging set of comments on the topic will be a much-more expansive set of quotations directly tied to the set of four themes.

See the original post here:
The Future of Free Speech, Trolls, Anonymity and Fake News Online - Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project

Ms. McMaster: Addressing your remarks about Judy Collins regarding the president. This is not a Hollywood rant, it is Ms. Collins exercising her right to free speech. You saw Ms. Collins perform five years ago; surely you knew of her liberal leanings. If the positions were reversed, and Ms. Collins had said something disparaging about former President Obama, would your reactions been the same?

Freedom of speech is a right enshrined in our Constitution, and it is a highway that runs both ways.

To quote Voltaire: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it

Ms. McMaster, your correct action (maybe) would have been to get up from your seat, go to the box office and, in righteous indignation, demand a refund of your ticket. But you did not do that, did you? Bet you enjoyed the show, Mrs. Lincoln!

More:
Judy Collins exercised her right to free speech with anti-Trump talk at concert - Wyoming Tribune

During a Saturday morning perusal of my bookshelf, I found myself looking for something to satiate a mood I couldnt quite put my finger on. My usual historical nonfiction wasnt hitting the mark. The narratives, though rich and intriguing, felt too glaringly matter of fact.

Fact, of course, has been a central topic of conversation in the national narrative lately. Likewise, so has truth. As a lifelong student of journalism, I have long engaged the meaning of both and attempted their pursuit as a professional in-the-field and student. So, I searched for a text that would shed some light on how to navigate this increasingly treacherous terrain in a more contemporary context.

Between the binds of books on journalism, mass communications theory, historical narratives on obscure but highly significant world events and the occasional memoir of a humorist, I spotted a small book I had forgotten about: Walter Lippmanns Public Philosophy. I had read it in my early years as a student of journalism. Perched next to a domineering textbook on First Amendment philosophy, Lippmanns work was overshadowed by the collection of texts that had inspired it.

Its an easy book to get lost. The small, thinly bound work is little more than 130 pages. My copy is one that I imagine a young, brooding James Dean-type character might carry in the back pocket of his jeans. Though it hasnt seen any significant days of well-styled rebellion in my hands, it has witnessed a great deal of intellectual sparring. Its pages are yellowed, worn and dog-eared, its binding and cover creased and faded.

I picked up the book, and sifted through it. One passage immediately stood out.

But when the chaff of silliness, baseness, and deception is so voluminous that it submerges the kernels of truth, freedom of speech may produce such frivolity, or such mischief, that it cannot be preserved against the demand for a restoration of order or of decency, wrote Lippmann. If there is a dividing line between liberty and license, it is where freedom of speech is no longer respected as a procedure of the truth and becomes the unrestricted right to exploit the ignorance, and to incite the passions, of the people, the passage continued.

Though written in 1958, contemporary concern over fake news, misinformation, misdirection, make these words alarmingly significant today. Lippmann built on the ideas of those before him, but his contextualization of the issues surrounding freedom of speech is particularly compelling in light of the age of media explosion. Silliness, baseness and deception have indeed become voluminous to an extent that he likely could have never imaged.

The perversion of freedom of speech as a means to exploit ignorance is now unparalleled because we all communicate unhindered, and at an incredible speed. Freedom of speech seems to have taken on some all-empowering power and is used as a protection for anything uttered at all, regardless of why or what. First Amendment scholar Alexander Mieklejohn wrote in his 1948 book Free Speech and its Relation to Self-government, When self-governing men demand freedom of speech they are not saying that every individual has an unalienable right to speak whenever, wherever, however he chooses. They do not declare that any man may talk as he pleases, when he pleases, about what he pleases, about whom he pleases, to whom he pleases. The common sense of any reasonable society would deny the existence of that unqualified right. Mieklejohn used the example of a random individual making assessments about a patient in a hospital without the consent of a nurse or doctor. That discussion would be considered out of order. Ultimately Mieklejohn contends that the First Amendment is not the guardian of unregulated talkativeness.

In essence, everyone may have a voice and the right to use it, but in the process of meaningful debate, the procedure truth is broken when freedom of speech, as a honored right, is conflated with a general notion of ones freedom to speak. This led me to the question: Is freedom of speech valuable without the procedure of truth? Its unlikely.

Truth is a concept that has long been in the throes of debate. Perhaps the most significant contention is that a truth is only considered a truth so long as it can stand the barrage of intelligent questioning and testing.

The key, Lippmann suggested, can be found in the wisdom of John Stuart Mill, a 19th century English philosopher.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguards to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempts fail, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it; in the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach to certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this is the sole way of attaining it.

If freedom of speech is designed to facilitate useful and meaningful progress in a society, the misuse of it destroys its necessity. It no longer serves a purpose, and as Lippmann suggests, may even create discord where it otherwise may not exist.

So, what happens when we value the concept of free speech but abandon the understanding of its purpose? We lose meaning, and ultimately we lose the process by which we derive, at least in the closest way possible, truth. We also lose the concept.

Perhaps we think that in the information-laden era in which we find ourselves, we are better equipped to discover the truth. After all, we have statistics and facts on our side. Weve documented them, put them in databases and can search for them with a tap of a few buttons and a few choice keywords. However, as Mill and Lippman suggest, its not facts that are the key to truth, its the contextualization of those facts and the understanding of them within their circumstances that allow us to establish the weight and meaning they should be given, or if they are meaningful at all. There are, after all, a plethora of meaningless facts.

The question is, as a society, are we prepared philosophically, technologically, or even conceptually, to reengage the procedure of truth?

Mill tasked us with two things. One, we must accept the challenge to prove a truth false. Two, if we fail in this challenge, we must understand that though we may not have proven the truth to be false, we are still not certain of its truth. We have not proven the truth to be true. However, we must also accept that we have done what is necessary to work toward establishing a truth and move forward, but with the understanding that continued challenging to that truth may, in time, find it to be false. The human mind must stay open to its own fallibility.

What Mill was describing, to some extent, was the importance of open-minded debate. Without debate, the seeking of truth is meaningless and cannot exist. Without a desire to seek out truth beyond fact that lacks context, meaningful expression is nonexistent.

Information, discussion, news whatever way in which we utilize our freedom of expression is only valuable when it adds to the debate or the meaningful pursuit of a contextualized understanding of situations, events or realities.

The question is, as a society, are we prepared philosophically, technologically or even conceptually, to reengage the procedure of truth?

If we continue to conflate the ideas of fact and truth and mistake the ability given by the freedom to speak with the incredible responsibility of the freedom of speech we will ultimately find ourselves in isolated vacuums, screaming out meaningless information to no one,reinforcing our existing thoughts. We will have all but abandoned the procedure of truth, and devalued a society right and responsibility. Freedom of speech is central to democracy, and without it we have no means of forward-moving independent thought.

Our existing means of communication have lulled us into a false sense of interaction when, in reality, we are increasingly isolated from debate. Weve isolated ourselves, nestled into pockets of like-minded thought and stayed there until our own perspectives have been so far reinforced that others seem like impossibilities, not alternative perspectives. Our debates are little more than a series of spewed facts, without context and meaningful analysis of established or emerging truths. True debate requires doubt as well as information, disbelief as well as criticism.

We exist not in an era of understanding, but in an era of information. We have ultimately neglected the idea of understanding as we have devalued the importance of debate.

While it may seem as though the First Amendment needs protecting, it is also true that a better understanding of it could serve as protection for us. Meikeljohn wrote:

Just so far as, at any point, the citizens who are to decide an issue are denied acquaintance with information or opinion or doubt or disbelief or criticism which is relevant to that issue, just so far as the result must be ill-considered, ill-balanced planning for the general good. It is that mutilation of the thinking process of the community against which the First Amendment to the Constitution is directed.

Perhaps then, our concern over actions that infringe on the First Amendment should be focused on both the protection of freedom of speech and the people who exercise the rights granted by it. There is equal and increasing danger to both.

*Image: Graffiti in Wales. Flickr/wiredforlego.

Visit link:
Unregulated Talkativeness and the Misuse of the Freedom of Speech - The Islamic Monthly

Operators of an anti-transgender-rights free speech bus succeeded in sparking a counter-demosntration in New Haven without even showing up.

The Free Speech Bus, funded by the conservative advocacy groups Citizen Go, National Organization for Marriage and International Organization for the Family, was scheduled to stop in town this weekend as part of a tour through the East Coast.

Painted bright orange, the bus is emblazoned with the statements Its Biology: Boys are boys and always will be. Girls are girls and always will be. The bus has prompted LGBTQ advocates to speak out against its message.

This was the message that two people vandalized in New York last Thursday, spray painting slogans like Trans Liberation across the sides. Protesters also keyed the bus and cracked windows with a hammer. That delayed the tour schedule, but also prompted the bus organizers and conservative allies to use the incident as a new exhibit in a campaign to portray the left as anti-free speech. The organizers also used the New York attack to raise money to get the bus back on the road.

New Haven protestors showed up on the Green to greet the bus Sunday afternoon with their own plan for obscuring the message.

Occupying the Greens Chapel and Church corner, they unfurled three tall blue tarps backed with wooden supports. EVERY BREATH A TRANS PERSON TAKES IS AN ACT OF REVOLUTION, read the largest one. BLACK TRANS LIVES MATTER and TRANS LIBERATION accompanied it on two smaller banners. The tarps towered over the people.

He said the tarps were pushback against the normalization of that kind of transphobic hate demonstrated by the bus. He added that by naming the bus Free Speech, its organizers were inviting attacks on it that would appear to be attacks on free speech. Which, he says, isnt the case.

Well, free speech prevents you from being censored by the government, Miller said. It doesnt prevent you from consequences from people on the ground.

By blocking the bus, we can cover up their message, he said. Were protecting the people of New Haven from its hateful message while putting forth a positive, empowering message.

The free speech bus campaign did not respond to messages seeking comment. It has not updates its websites since announcing the New York incident and delay.

Sunday afternoons New Haven protest was personal for Miller Before leading the protestors many of whom had gathered after hearing about the event on social media in a series of chants, he announced that he had transitioned a decade ago.

When the bus failed to show, the counterdemonstrators rallied around the tarps and the absence of the bus as a cause for celebration.

Its just a provocation, right? observed Andrew Dowe, who works at Yales Office of LGBTQ Resources, arguing that the entire bus campaign was designed to pervert the notion of the freedom of speech. Dowe said it was nice to see a message of positivity n the Green instead.

Then Rochelle invited the crowd back downtown on Tuesday, where organizers are planning an extended rally for trans lives.

Read the original here:
No-Show Free Speech Bus Sparks Protest - New Haven Independent

While it doesnt make it against the law, some are saying that the motion that condemns Islamophobia in Canada could lead to criticisms ofthe religionbeing viewed was actsof Islamophobia, which could muzzle free speech rights. M-103, which was passed on Thursday, states that the House Of Commons condemns Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.

Heres thetext of the motion:

It doesnt seem too controversial, though opponents say that this motion could put free speech in the crosshairsand a substantial number of Canadians feel the same way (viaThe National Post):

The vote was 201 for and 91 against.

[]

The motion was proposed by Iqra Khalid, a first-time MP representing a Mississauga, Ont. riding. In addition to the resolution condemning Islamophobia, it asks the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to study the issue of eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia; and calls on the federal government collect data on hate crimes for further study.

[]

In debate earlier this week, Conservative MPs endorsed the sentiment but objected to the wording of the motion in the belief that it could lead to the suppression of speech rights.

The word Islamophobia can be used to mean both discrimination against Muslims and criticism of Islamic doctrine or practice. It is important that we not conflate the two religious people deserve legal protection, but religions do not, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said during a Commons debate Tuesday night. People should not discriminate against individuals, but should feel quite free to criticize the doctrine, history, or practice of any religion.

[]

Khalids motion changes no existing laws nor does it create any new laws.

And yet, the Angus Reid poll finds that three in 10 of those surveyed believed Khalids motion is, in fact, a threat to Canadians freedom of speech.

The publication added that the Angus Reid poll also noted that most Canadians are against the motion, with 42 percent saying they would'vevoted against it if they were members of parliament. Twenty-nine percent would support it and another 29 percent werent sure or said they would have abstained. The sample size was 1,511 people.

More:
Does The Canadian Motion Condemning Islamophobia Put Free Speech In The Crosshairs? 30 Percent Of Canadians ... - Townhall

Opinion | Column

let freedom ring

On March 2, Charles Murray, a controversial sociologist and author, was scheduled to speak at Middlebury College. Murray was invited to campus by the schools chapter of the American Enterprise Institute Club, an organization that promotes political conservatism. The schools collective reaction to Murrays mere presence on campus was, in a word, antagonistic. When he took the stage to begin his debate, Murray faced an audience littered with protesters who were intent on denying him the opportunity to speak.

While the protest was simply disruptive at the start, it eventually became violentMurrays co-presenter, Middlebury politics and economics professor Allison Stanger, required a trip to the hospital after being struck by a protester.

Much of the protesters anger towards Murray came from their moral opposition to some of his past writings. While Murray has written on a variety of topics, his most controversial piece was his 1994 work, The Bell Curve, where he dedicates a portion of the book to the possibility that genetic differences between races may contribute to disparities in average IQ test scores. This idea has faced significant criticism from both popular and academic sources, and many students at Middlebury, and Duke, surely find his ideas erroneous and reprehensible.

That said, the fundamental right of freedom of speech is most important in situations like Murrayswhere polarizing speakers propagate equally unpopular opinions. More broadly than ones individual opinion of Murray, the precedent of censoring unpopular opinions on college campuses is dangerous from any perspective.

Many of the speakers who routinely inspire protests on college campuses come from the right, and the history of protests surrounding controversial conservative speakers is extensive. From the violence surrounding Milo Yiannopoulos appearance at the University of California, Berkeley to the cancellation of Condoleezza Rices commencement address at Rutgers University, figures from the right (in both the traditional and alternative sense) have not been welcomed with open arms on college campuses.

Albeit with less controversy, Murray continued his speaking tour by visiting Duke on Tuesday, bringing this issue even closer to home. Without the interference of protesters, Murray had the opportunity to speak to students as he intended to at Middlebury. The fact that Duke, a campus that is overwhelmingly liberal, was able to engage with a speaker whose beliefs starkly diverge from those of most students, speaks highly to the academic environment that Duke has created for its students.

While Duke superseded Middlebury in its ability to tolerate the presence of a controversial conservative speaker, that is not to say that Duke is perfect in its promotion of freedom of speech.

In a recent piece, the Editorial Board of this publication addressed the issue of free speech and controversial guest speakers. Central to the article is the idea that a speaker must be innocuous to earn the right to freely address a university community such as Dukes. While this criterion may sound appealing in the abstract, its application to actual situations is much more difficult. Who gets to decide whether a guest speaker is innocuous, and is it even possible to make that distinction in an equitable, apolitical manner?

Freedom of speech represents a fundamental tenant of any free society or institution of higher learning. In the wake of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris, the Editorial Board confirmed this importance bywarning that we must remain vigilant and aware that there are attempts at curtailing speech occurring everyday. And while the protests at Middlebury differ significantly from the Charlie Hebdo attack in that the protestors did not practice terrorism, their efforts undeniably sought to silence Murray and rob him of his right to speak freely.

It is disappointing that the Editorial Board did not condemn the violence that occurred at Middlebury and reaffirm its commitment to free speech. To the contrary, yesterdays Editorial clearly represented an attack on free speech as it exists at Duke. As one of the thought leaders of the Duke community, the Board holds the sacred responsibility to speak out when such an obvious subjugation of free speech occurs.

Unlike many stories that occur in the news, this one is not far removed from Duke. Many Duke students surely considered Middlebury in their college search process, and Charles Murray, the man whose ideas inspired such vitriolic backlash at Middlebury, walked around this campus just a few days ago.

By nature, it is uncomfortable to encounter ideas that critique and challenge ones own. The events at Middlebury represent a clear example of a dangerous trend in higher education where popular disagreement with an outspoken guest speaker leads to censorship. Protecting the freedom of expression is one of the most important obligations Duke has to its students, and the school must always remain a place where conservatives and liberals, moderates and radicals, have the opportunity to openly debate some of the greatest issues of our time.

Ian Buchanan is a Trinity freshman. His column, "let freedom ring" runs on alternate Thursdays.

The Chronicle is your source for Duke news, sports, culture and dialogue.

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See the original post here:
Charles Murray and the subjugation of free speech - Duke Chronicle

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The United Nations, ahead of its global celebration of the International Day for Elimination of Racial Discrimination, sent out a press release putting forth the notion that free speech is good free speech is necessary. But free speech has its limits.

Umm, forgive us for asking the obvious, but isnt that another way of saying the government has a duty to crack down on freedom of speech?

Seems kind of counter to the whole Constitution thing.

But this is what the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, said in a statement.

Politics of division and the rhetoric of intolerance are targeting racial, ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, and migrants and refugees, Zeid said. Words of fear and loathing can, and do, have real consequences.

Wonder what kind of words Zeid meant?

Could it be the type uttered by President Donald Trump, when he vowed on the campaign trail and again, in the White House, to curtail the number of unauthorized incursions across Americas borders not only from Mexico and Central America, but also from terror hot spot nations around the world?

Methinks maybe.

Zeids statement also included a press for governments around the world to outright ban racist hate speech, which he called the precursor to discrimination and violence.

It is not an attack on free speech or the silencing of controversial ideas or criticism, but a recognition that the right to freedom of expression carries with it special duties and responsibilities, he said.

Well, actually, curtailing free speech is an attack on free speech thats exactly what it is. Thats a dictionary definition, in fact.

Lets not dismiss this as typical U.N. talk.

Why Americans should care that the United Nations is pushing this mantra is that its not so easy nowadays, if you havent noticed, to simply dismiss notions of the far left. What would have been seen as crazy talk just a few short years ago, is now accepted policy.

When Hillary Clinton called for a national health care system, she was derided as socialist. When Barack Obama pressed for the same, it passed into law.

When Sen. Bernie Sanders called for free college tuition, he was mocked and scorned. When presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called for free college tuition, he was applauded and favorably polled.

See where Im going with this?

Too many in the Democratic Party right now point to Trump as a driver of hate as a fanner of protest flames. They blame him for the broken glass, busted cars and beaten police that have marked the medias stories on recent protests about the new White House.

That blame, misplaced as it is, nonetheless is just a short hop and skip from saying language ought to be controlled. Now here comes the United Nations, coincidentally, with the suggestions, recommendations and means for governments around the world to do just that. Watch for it: Democrats wont be long in lining up some legislation that underscores the importance of the First Amendment at the same time, watering and gutting its freedom of speech rights.

View original post here:
UN, post-Trump, tries hand at banning speech - Washington Times

An Australian member of parliament was stopped from speaking in the middle of a debate over free speech.

Bill Shorten, the leader of Australias Labor Party, (pictured above) was stopped from speaking while attempting to criticize proposals by the government to change racial discrimination laws.

Shorten was silenced after 74 MPs voted to cut short his time, which he was using to deride prime minister Malcolm Turnbull for his cynical legislation.

AsHeat Street reported earlier this week, Australian politicians are attempting to amend the nations Racial Discrimination Act so that it is no longer illegal to offend somebody.

They instead want to change the text of the legislation so that only exchanges which harass or intimidate people because of their race are a matter for the courts. Those who break the law are eligible for large fines.

Turnbull and others say the current legislation has lost its credibility and must be amended to stop spurious claims and defend freedom of speech.

However, their determination to protect free speech did not extend to the speech Shorten was trying to make.

He piqued fellow legislators by proposing a motion deriding what he called a cynical attempt by the Prime Minister to be able to claim to the extreme elements in his party room that his Government is taking action

Shortly after he finished describing his motion, an official called for a vote on whether Shorten should be forced to stop speaking. It passed by 74 votes to 69.

Excerpt from:
Australian MP Censored in Debate on Free Speech - Heat Street

British universities will be forced to defend freedom of speech on campus under new plans devised by the Government.

Institutions many under fire for allowing censorship, bans and language policing to flourish in recent years will now be compelled to stand up for free speech.

Rules will also extend to students unions, which are more likely to be the source of censorious rules than administrations themselves.

The plans will effectively outlaw no-platforming movements which seek to shut down events by speakers with whom student activists disagree.

The new policy was announced in a letter to university leaders, seen byThe Timesof London.

Universities minister Jo Johnson reminded bosses that it is their legal duty to ensure free speech for members, students, employees and visiting speakers.

A specific measure which would shut down no-platforming said that access to premises must never be denied to any individual or body on any grounds connected with their beliefs or views, policy or objective.

It further added that all universities must have a code laying out how free speech will be observed in meetings, which should be vigorously enforced rather than left to gather dust.

Heat Street has extensively documented the clampdown on free speech on British campuses.

Student societies such as the anti-abortion Stratclyde Life Actionwere shut downfor contravening safe space policies, while feminist Julie Bindel and Milo Yiannopoulos were banned from debating each other by Manchester University Students Union.

An Iranian dissident was prevented from speaking by Warwick University Students Union because of her opposition to Shariah law, while the union at Queen Mary University of London sparked protests by banning tabloid newspapers.

The anti-censorship websitespikedcompiled a free speech rankings, the most recent edition of which found that 94% of campuses censor free speech in some way, with 64% given a red ranking, the lowest possible rating.

More:
Government Will Force UK Universities to Defend Free Speech - Heat Street

Time for me to wrap up. What happened?

My thanks to Andrew Meares and Alex Ellinghausen for their excellent work and to you for reading and commenting.

You can follow me on Facebook.

Alex, Andrew and I will be back in the morning. We hope to see you then. Enjoy your evening.

In the House of Representatives MPs are debating the changes to 18C.

Labor frontbencher Linda Burney begins her speech by reading out a text message she received today: "Why are you abos allowed to harass people outside grocery stores?"

The Special Minister ofState, Scott Ryan, has flagged the introduction of the government's electoral law changes.

Next week legislation will be introduced which, if passed, the government hopes will rule out a repeat of Labor's 'Mediscare' texts.

"These changes will better serve voters by making sure Australians know who is trying to influence them," SenatorRyan said.

"This bill will ensure all are treated fairly and equally in requiring political material to be authorised, and bring the regime into the modern era."

Liberal senator James Paterson, a leading proponent of changing the race hate laws, is speaking to Sky News.

He says there are too many cases going before the courts and it is limiting people's right to free speech.

"Offence is not a good enough reason on its own [to make a complaint]," Senator Paterson says.

"Idon't think insultseither are good enough grounds to limit free speech."

"The hard right derides it in the liberal-left as "virtue signalling" - piousflag-waving by the elites around such causes as refugees,multiculturalism, climate change, and entrenched sexism -designed to show its members exist on a higher moral plane," Mark Kenny writes.

"So what is to be made of the Turnbull government's fanatical tinkering with the nation's racial offence laws? The expression ofelectoral urgency, of public clamour?"

And that's itfor question time.

The opposition has returned to one of its favourite games - baiting Treasurer Scott Morrison.

I thought it would have stuck with free speech for a bit longer but there you go.

The chamber has settled down - a bit - since question time began.

It's always nice when ex MPs drop in.

All the government's questions have been about energy policy.

It's even managing to link the recent asthma attacks that sparked a spike in the numbers of people turning to hospital admissions departments to energy.

It does this by saying it is incredibly important that the power in hospitals doesn't go out which means it is great the Snowy Hydro scheme is being expanded.

Which is not untrue, it's just a bit of a stretch.

Mr Turnbull: "Ibelieve all Australians are absolutely opposed to racism in any form."

Dr Aly asks another question referencing her own experiences of racism: "What exactly does the Prime Minister want people to be able to say that they cannot say now?"

Mr Turnbull: "Iunderstand the point the honourable member is saying. Ican assure hermy government,and all Australians,are opposed to racism in any form."

Labor MP Anne Aly asks Mr Turnbull a question about the Racial Discrimination Act.

Her question is genuine but it doesn't hurt that it's Parliament's first female Muslim asking a very establishment man about the issue.

"Clear language provides better protection," Mr Turnbull say.

"Australian are entitled to speak freely."

Mr Turnbull: "It's a stronger law, a fairer law."

The chamber has reached Thursday-like levels in terms of cacophonies and walls of noise.

Question time begins.

No prizes for guessing what topic of the day will be.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten asks Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull why he has chosen "today, of all days" to water down protections against racial discrimination.

Mr Turnbull says the Coalition has "more respect for the Australian people than the Australian Labor Party".

"We know that our precious freedoms, our freedom of speech, is the foundation of our nation."

Nearly question time.

The government will introduce the changes into the Senate (because that's where Senator Brandis resides).

But Mr Burke suggests it might be because the Coalition is concerned it might not have enough votes in the House of Representatives.

Labor is very anti the Coalition's proposed changes.

"As if we're meant to believe this is a strengthening of the law - no one will believe that," frontbencher Tony Burke says.

"Yesterday this government released its multicultural policy. It didn't even survive 24 hours before they walked all over it."

This is the event Mr Turnbull attended shortly before the press conference.

"A clearer law is a stronger law," Mr Turnbull says.

"The reality is if you have language which is too wide, too general, it has a chilling effect on free speech."

"What we've set out is clear language which will protect Australians from racial vilification."

And that's it for the press conference.

Mr Turnbull is asked if the Coalition isprepared to lose votes because of the issue.

Mr Turnbull says Labor will exploit any issue for votes: "Why would this be any different?"

Link:
Politics live: Free speech in the spotlight as politicians argue about 18C - The Sydney Morning Herald