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A sixth form student looks at his A-Level results at The Crossley Heath Grammar School in Halifax, England, August 13, 2020. (Molly Darlington/Reuters)

A U.K. proposal known as the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill has attracted controversy and criticism from the Left lately. Some question whether legislation is the appropriate answer to growing threats against free speech, while others remain unconvinced that there is a necessity for government action at all.

The bill, if passed, would allow the Office for Students (OfS), which is an independent regulatory body of British higher education, to monitor and enforce freedom of speech measures at higher education institutions, introduce a complaints system and redress for breaches of free speech duties through the introduction of a statutory tort, extend duties on free speech to students unions and create a role of Director of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the OfS.

Given the well-documented threats to free speech on U.K. college campuses, the bill appears to be a reasonable solution to the growing presence of censorship, voluntary or involuntary, on U.K. campuses. And its perfectly plausible that legislation is the correct route to take.

A report published by ADF International reveals that almost 40% of students admit fears that expressing their views on campus could adversely affect their future career opportunities. Journalist Jenni Murrays speaking engagement at Oxford University was canceled after a comment she made in a newspaper article that was deemed transphobic came to light; and a lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, on the other hand, was dismissed for asserting that faith is not something to be admired.

Critics of the speech bill claim it is simply not necessary. The spokeswoman for Universities UK contends it would only [duplicate] existing legislation and [create] unnecessary bureaucracy without providing any protection to speech beyond the current legal framework. The general secretary of the University and College Union asserts that it relies on an [incredible] over-exaggeration of issues.

Lets look at the legal tradition of free speech in the U.K. The basis of this right is established through the common law and the European Convention, which was incorporated into U.K. domestic law by the legislature through the Human Rights Act.

Of course, the American Constitutions guarantee of free speech is more robust than that used in the European Convention, whose protection of freedom of expression is subjected to an array of exceptions. While the First Amendment states categorically that Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, the European Convention cautiously states that freedom of expression may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law for various reasons including the protection of health or morals. The common law, meanwhile, is constantly evolving in accordance with contemporary jurisprudence.

In the U.S., the First Amendment offers ample legal grounds for citizens to challenge laws restricting speech on the basis of constitutionality alone.Butaccording to a policy paper issued by the U.K. government, there is no clear means of enforcing compliance with the duties to protect freedom of speech under the current legal framework. The U.K. does not currently have tort laws that apply specifically to free speech, and common-law jurisprudence has been reluctant to find violations of free speech on the part of colleges. The Higher Education Bill aims to fill in the gaps andallow individuals to file legal claims against educational institutions accused of free-speech violations.

A true defender of free speech would proclaim that the answer to wrong speech is invariably more speech. It is evident that self-censorship of students and the removal of speakers and educators whose opinions may offend all lead to a common result which is narrowing the scope of information available to students.

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U.K. Free-Speech Bill a Sound Solution to Censorship - National Review

The debate over censorship of the internet by big tech companies seems to be intensifying. This is a real problem, but there is a danger that some potential cures may be worse than the disease.

The big tech media giants have increasingly been making editorial decisions relating to major political controversies. Given the near monopolistic reach of companies like Twitter and Facebook, critics, particularly on the right, have a legitimate concern that there is a concerted effort to suppress political speech.

There are numerous examples of this, and not just the current ban of former President Trump, who won 74 million votes in the last election, from both Facebook and Twitter. You dont have to believe Mr. Trumps claims that the last election was stolen, or endorse his actions on January 6, to think that it is inappropriate to exclude such an important political figure for extended periods. But it goes well beyond Mr. Trumps exclusion. The tech companies seem increasingly disinclined to permit political posts that runs counter to the prevailing liberal narrative. For example, just before the election a decision was made to squelch a credible report in the New York Post concerning Hunter Bidens laptop and its possible connection to candidate Joe Biden.

And with respect to the Covid virus, almost any speech outside the mainstream has been excluded, or at least subject to contentious fact checks or cautionary messages. For a while even stories suggesting a connection between the virus and the Chinese laboratory in Wuhan were considered disinformation. To be clear, I got the vaccine months ago, and I think most people should get shots. But excluding much of the skepticism about the vaccines, its efficacy and its potential side effects seems a little excessive.

While it isnt a good thing that a few billionaires have an outsized impact on what is permissible speech, it is less than obvious what can be done as a remedy.

One potential solution would be to require that large internet providers treat all speech equally, as is required of the government, which (unlike private companies) is subject to the First Amendment. Alternatively, you could treat the big providers as though they are a public utility which, like the telephone companies of old, were largely required to accept speech from all comers.

While the argument has been made that the big tech sites operate the functional equivalent of the town square, and thus is similar the government, in fact the tech companies have different rights, powers and responsibilities than governmental authorities. In addition, you probably wouldnt want all speech rules applicable to the government also to apply to the tech companies. For example, most people are comfortable with at least some forms of censorship by the tech companies. Facebook, for example, seems well within its rights to prohibit pornographic images which might not be legally obscene. And even if it might be legally protected speech, few of us are concerned that that, say, Twitter, does not allow rants by neo-Nazis or the Klan on its site. Similar arguments would be applicable to the public utility theory since censorship would be largely prohibited.

It has also been suggested that large utilities lose their protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which under most circumstances shields internet company for liability for defamatory posts of third parties. The problem here is that, unlike newspapers and most television shows, it is impossible, or at least very impractical, to prescreen user content.

There is also the idea of an antitrust initiative against the big players, with unknown economic ramifications.

I guess in my perfect world, there would be an understanding by the tech company that suppressing a large chunk of political speech is not in their long term best interest and that they would do well to take a less heavy hand rather than be subjected to the heavy hand of legislation or regulation. Well see if they come to realize that.

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Big Tech, Censorship and the Internet - Garden City News

Opinion: Banning the teaching of critical race theory in Arizona schools is a slippery slope. What does Gov. Doug Ducey fear?

Joseph Russomanno| opinion contributor

What is Critical Race Theory?

CRT examines systemic racism as a part of American life and institutions and how it can give white people an advantage.

Erin Davoran and Dwight Adams, Wochit

When a government prohibits a specific message, thats censorship. Its also anti-democratic, despotic and disrespectful of its citizens, suggesting they are not equipped to handle the truth or even to consider alternate views.

Its also the sign of a weak government, one that fears new ideas that may challenge the status quo and expose existing myths. Controlling those ideas is mistakenly viewed as the best response.

When Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation forbidding the teaching of critical race theory in Arizona schools, he checked all of these boxes and joined the truth deniers.

Another view: Sorry, Gov. Ducey, but you did NOT ban CRT

Truth doesnt magically appear. It comes from hard work that includes the serious consideration, discussion and debate of various ideas.

That discussion is not only protected by the First Amendment. Its also a primary reason our founders safeguarded speech and press from government interference with the First Amendment.

Exchanging ideas is the best path to truth discovery. Its an ongoing process with the possibility that what is regarded as truthful may be modified later when better evidence is discovered and considered. Limiting speech is an affront to truth discovery.

This loop of reconsideration is vital. Certainty is a trap. As the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes noted, Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

Existing beliefs need to be tested. The United States has committed itself to the idea of uninhibited, robust and wide open debate on public issues, at the same time recognizing that those discussions may be caustic. Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field, wrote philosopher John Stuart Mill.

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By closing discussion on an issue, one short-circuits the truth, becomes complicit in its cover-up and denies learning opportunities.

No issue merits more analysis than Americas tumultuous history with race. The new Arizona law, however, suppresses that effort, apparently steeped in misunderstanding of critical race theoryand the belief that it makes some people uncomfortable.

Guess what? Sometimes discovering the truth is uncomfortable.

In what has become a beacon for the exchange of ideas in schools, a University of Chicago report concluded that education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think.

No venue is more appropriate to conduct the exchange of ideas so cherished by our founders than our schools. Reminders surface frequently, a notable example stemming recently from Chapel Hill, N.C.,and the botched hiring of Nikole Hannah-Jones, the chief architect of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project. The classroom is ideal for considering ideas, including that white supremacy is far more ingrained in our culture than many believe.

This law banning teaching critical race theory is not only unconstitutional, but its supporters step onto a very slippery slope. If critical race theoryis off limits today, then what topics become inappropriate in the future? Climate change? Voting rights?

What happens to books on these topics, including those on CRT itself? Are book bans on the horizon, too? It seems that 1984was not in the past. Oceania beckons.

It is important to remember that critical race theory, though based in fact, is just that a theory subject to examination.

But theories are often the seeds of truth. Imagine if other theories had been banned from schools or general discussion over history: Newtons gravity, Galileos Heliocentric model of the solar system or Einsteins theory of relativity. These were thought to be heretical in some circles, yet today we think of those opposition views as backward and ignorant.

How will our descendants view the July 2021 version of us?

Joseph Russomanno is an expert on First Amendment law and theory and a professor at ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Reach him at russo@asu.edu.

Link:
If critical race theory is off limits in Arizona schools today, what's next? - The Arizona Republic

Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images

Governments are increasingly demanding the removal of journalist content from Twitter, the company's latest Transparency Report shows.

During the second half of 2020, says Twitter, it received 361 legal requests from governments to remove content from the verified accounts of 199 journalists and news outlets, up 26 per cent on the first half of the year.

Overall, the company says it received 38,524 legal demands to remove content specifying 131,933 accounts.

"Although there was a nine per cent decrease in the number of legal demands Twitter received, compared to the previous reporting period, these requests sought removal of content from the largest number of accounts ever in a single reporting period," says Twitter.

Twitter removed some or all of the content concerned in 29 per cent of cases almost all of which came from Japan, India, Russia, Turkey and South Korea.

Meanwhile, India has overtaken the US as the country making the most legal requests for information about accounts, representing a quarter of the total global volume and 15 per cent of the total number of accounts.

India has recently introduced new legislation aimed at regulating social media companies more tightly, and requiring them to appoint India-based chief compliance officers, nodal officers and grievance officers. The government has also stripped Twitter of its safe harbor immunity, meaning it is no longer protected from legal proceedings in the event of unlawful content posted by users.

The US, meanwhile, accounted for 22 per cent of information requests, and more than a third of emergency requests.

Twitter has also introduced a metric for tweets that violate its policies, and says that impressions on these tweets accounted for less than 0.1 per cent of all impressions for all tweets globally.

Of the 3.8 million tweets it removed for violating rules, more than three quarters received fewer than 100 impressions before they were pulled, with only six per cent getting more than 1,000 hits.

Enforcement of rule violation was up in several categories by 142 per cent in the case of abuse and harassment, 194 per cent for non-consensual nudity, 77 per cent for hateful conduct and 175 per cent for civic integrity violations such as the sharing of misleading election information.

Meanwhile, the number of accounts targeted for promoting suicide and self-harm nearly tripled.

There was only a six per cent rise in the number of accounts suspended for violations of Twitter's child sexual exploitation policy, and a 35 per cent fall in suspensions for terrorism and violent extremism.

However, says Twitter, "Varying country-specific Covid-19 restrictions and adjustments within our teams affected the efficiency of our content moderation work and the speed with which we enforced our policies."

Link:
Governments Increase Pressure On Twitter To Censor Journalists - Forbes

Its not necessarily a surprise that these videos make news. People make their videos because they work. Getting views has been one of the more effective strategies to push a big platform to fix something for years. Tiktok, Twitter, and Facebook have made it easier for users to report abuse and rule violations by other users. But when these companies appear to be breaking their own policies, people often find that the best route forward is simply to try to post about it on the platform itself, in the hope of going viral and getting attention that leads to some kind of resolution. Tylers two videos on the Marketplace bios, for example, each have more than 1 million views.

"Contents getting flagged because they are someone from a marginalized group who is talking about their experiences with racism. Hate speech and talking about hate speech can look very similar to an algorithm.

I probably get tagged in something about once a week, says Casey Fiesler, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies technology ethics and online communities. Shes active on TikTok, with more than 50,000 followers, but while not everything she sees feels like a legitimate concern she says the apps regular parade of issues is real. TikTok has had several such errors over the past few months, all of which have disproportionately impacted marginalized groups on the platform.

MIT Technology Review has asked TikTok about each of these recent examples, and the responses are similar: after investigating, TikTok finds that the issue was created in error, emphasizes that the blocked content in question is not in violation of their policies, and links to support the company gives such groups.

The question is whether that cyclesome technical or policy error, a viral response and apologycan be changed.

There are two kinds of harms of this probably algorithmic content moderation that people are observing, Fiesler says. One is false negatives. People are like, why is there so much hate speech on this platform and why isnt it being taken down?

The other is a false positive. Their contents getting flagged because they are someone from a marginalized group who is talking about their experiences with racism, she says. Hate speech and talking about hate speech can look very similar to an algorithm.

Both of these categories, she noted, harm the same people: those who are disproportionately targeted for abuse end up being algorithmically censored for speaking out about it.

TikToks mysterious recommendation algorithms are part of its successbut its unclear and constantly changing boundaries are already having a chilling effect on some users. Fiesler notes that many TikTok creators self-censor words on the platform in order to avoid triggering a review. And although shes not sure exactly how much this tactic is accomplishing, Fielser has also started doing it, herself, just in case. Account bans, algorithmic mysteries, and bizarre moderation decisions are a constant part of the conversation on the app.

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Welcome to TikToks endless cycle of censorship and mistakes - MIT Technology Review