Freedom of Speech

In the EU, member states are pressing on for censorship of online video:

European Union ministers have approved proposals to make social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube tackle videos with hate speech on their platforms.
The proposals, which would be the first legislation at EU level on the issue, still need to be agreed with the European Parliament before becoming law.

And, under the same scheme, there is a totally unrelated proposal for cultural protectionism:

“Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet,” it states. “We disagree.”

The Independent: Theresa May to Crete New Internet that would be Controlled and Regulated by Government »

Something remarkable happened in Sweden this week: a list of 15,000 people with the wrong political opinions was used to block those people from the @Sweden account, and thereby preventing these people from communicating over Twitter with that part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The government tried defending the block as only concerning neo-nazi right-wing extremists, which was a narrative that held water in legacy media until somebody pointed out that the Ambassador of Israel (!) was among the blocked.

Article 13 (in the European Union’s draft Copyright Directive), fewer than 250 words, is designed to provoke such legal uncertainty that internet companies will have no option other than to block, filter and monitor our communications, if they want to have any chance of staying in business. Ultimately, only the current internet giants, shedding crocodile tears at the prospect, will be able to survive. From global internet to “Googlebook”.

Youtube »

Facebook is having a hard time lately amid claims of fake news, political bias and sexism. The European Union considered legislation to encourage a more unified response to such postings and Germany supports fines for social networks that ignore hate speech. Similarly, today an Austrian appeals court ruled that Facebook must delete hate postings written about the leader of the country’s Green party — and not just in Austria.

Our study of search and politics in seven nations – which surveyed the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain in January 2017 – found these concerns to be overstated, if not wrong. In fact, many internet users trust search to help them find the best information, check other sources and discover new information in ways that can burst filter bubbles and open echo chambers. (…)

This one will have our full attention.

Police in the Republic of Ireland have launched an investigation after a viewer claimed comments made by Stephen Fry on a TV show were blasphemous.

The alleged crime…

The EU is in the process of updating the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD).
As one could expect, this opens the floodgates when it comes to regulating and censoring content such as video (and even animated GIF:s) on a number of platforms. This includes otherwise legal content.
Today the EU E-Commerce Directive gives service providers and platforms some reasonable protection. EDRi explains…

Professor Schulz criticises the fact that the draft law covers a range of different types of offences, making it difficult to assess its necessity as a means of restricting freedom of speech. More damningly, he points to the key assumptions on which the law is based, arguing that they have been abandoned “for a long time”. Furthermore, he argues that “there are many effective ways of addressing fake news or hateful speech” that should be [implicitly, were not] taken into account to minimise potential negative effects on freedom of speech”.