The suppression of the alleged hate speech is intensifying on social media. Reddit has banned over 2.000 subreddits as part of cleaning up what he believed to be hate speech. Twitch temporarily banned President Trump.
Facebook expelled the "boogaloo" group (part of a free affiliation of anti-government forces fighting for a second civil war), which proposed an incitement to violence. And YouTube has banned a group of far-right content creators, including white nationalists like David Duke.
These latest measures increase the volume of a long-standing debate and raise important questions about free speech in the modern Internet age, including what constitutes hato speech, if platforms are forced to allow hate content and, above all, who should make decisions about the nature of the content.
A double edged sword
The standards for defining hate speech are too vague and wide, and they give full discretion to those who apply them, said Nadine Strossen, a professor of law at New York University and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU ).
Giving individuals that power means that they will enforce them according to their personal opinions and this could lead to disproportionately censoring the opinions and voices of minorities, he said.
Amy James, co-founder of the Open Index Protocol (OIP), which is a kind of decentralized patent filing system that protects the content created on it, organizing it and making sure that the creators are paid for, said the bans are terrifying for a variety of reasons.
"Even if you don't agree with the information, censoring it doesn't destroy it, it just allows it to spread without counterparts," said James. She added that it absolutely provides for more bans in the future, mainly because the Internet is not a public place in real life where the laws of the Constitution apply.
This is a fundamental part of this debate. By entering these platforms, you give them the right to moderate and adjust your speech to a large extent as they see fit, with little or no resources.
Is there a way forward?
Rather than looking for government-legislated solutions, James said that the solutions offered by blockchain and decentralized Web 3.0 provide a better path. In practice, it appears to support cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and open source web browsers like Brave.
Strossen has a market where there are several viable alternatives with different content moderation standards to choose from. Ideally, this would translate into end users who are empowered to make their own informed choices.
Strossen said that no one will ever be completely satisfied with the standards, regardless of how they are formulated or applied because of the subjectivity of the problems in question.
Le Facebook shares listed on the NASDAQ do not appear to be affected by recent discontent with social media ban policies. As of this writing, FB shares are priced at USD 240,28, with a 1-month performance of + 3,73%.
