Articles about Free Speech

Pakistan is seeking help from Facebook and Twitter to help execute its incredibly strict blasphemy laws. Anyone found guilty of insulting the Prophet Muhammed, or Islam in general, risks being sentenced to death, and the country is keen to track down offenders both at home and abroad.

The two social networks have only been asked to identify Pakistanis, but the move is likely to raise concerns about privacy. Of equal concern will be not only what is deemed to be blasphemous, but who makes that judgement -- particularly when Pakistan is seeking to identify offenders in other countries.

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If you've ever got into an argument about the age of an actor, or you've just been curious about how old someone is, you may well have hit IMDB to find out. But starting next year, the Internet Movie Database will have to comply with requests to remove age details from profiles after the state of California passed a new anti-discrimination law.

The bill, AB-1687, requires that all sites that have paid subscriptions that allow people to post resumes and other information respect requests to remove information relating to age -- or just not post this information in the first place. Welcomed by some, the new legislation has also been criticised for being a violation of free speech.

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Twitter continues its drive to clean itself up, purging unwanted content and users from the service. Today the company announces that in the last six months it has closed down 235,000 accounts relating to extremism.

It's part of the company's plans to scrub as many accounts from existence as possible that push "violent threats and the promotion of terrorism". With the recent spate of terrorist attacks around the world, Twitter's resolve has been hardened.

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Following prolonged talks with the Bangladesh government, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have all agreed to do more to remove 'inappropriate content' from the internet. State Minister for Telecoms, Tarana Halim, said: "After intense discussion with Facebook, Google and Microsoft, it has been agreed that they will respond to requests within 48 hours".

Agreeing to the Bangladesh government's demands comes just weeks after major tech companies agreed to a new code of conduct to combat online hate speech. In this instance, however, it has not been made entirely clear what constitutes inappropriate content, and the announcement will raise questions about the tech trio bowing to governmental demands.

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Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft are working in conjunction with the European Commission to try to tackle the problem of illegal online hate speech. This is something that the companies have taken steps to fight individually, but now there is a concerted effort to combat hate speech and terrorist propaganda in Europe.

New EU regulations require the companies to review notifications they receive about hate speech within 24 hours. The four tech giants have agreed to the new code of conduct, saying the 'majority' of reported content will be examined within a day.

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Microsoft has outlined its latest plans to crack down on terrorist and extremist content online. Recognizing that the "internet can be used for the worst reasons imaginable" the company has set out its approach for ensuring that content promoting terrorism does not make it online through its services.

As well as updating its terms of use to make it explicitly clear that terrorist content is not permitted, Microsoft is also planning to up its game in seeking out and removing offending content. To help with this task, the company is forging new partnerships with experts in the field, as well as employing new technology to help to automatically identify and remove terrorist material.

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Online abuse is a serious problem. While the likes of Twitter and Facebook are great platforms for trolls to indulge their hobby, it's the good, old-fashioned comments section where you'll find some of the most obvious examples of threats and abuse. The problem is so great that many websites have taken the seemingly drastic step of completely disabling comments on stories, while others do so on an individual basis for articles that could prove controversial.

Clearly this is less than ideal. In many ways it could be viewed as a form of censorship that curtails freedom of speech, and comments can be a valuable way to help a story to evolve. For many sites, comments are a black and white topic; on or off. Moderation -- again, often seen as a type of censorship -- is often employed, but this does little to stop abuse aimed at writers. The Guardian has conducted research into the abuse dealt out via comments on its site, and the findings make for disturbing reading.

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The web facilitates free speech, but it also gives groups the opportunity to try to silence those they disagree with. DDoS attacks are common way to retaliate against opposing views, and today Google is expanding Project Shield to protect sites from such attacks.

Project Shield is not a new service, but it has been limited to a group of testers since its launch a few years back. Designed to detect and eliminate "DDoS as a form of censorship" the free service is now available to everyone -- those who qualify, at least. The aim is to protect news and human rights sites to ensure uninterrupted access to news and information.

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Today, Internet censorship is becoming a growing concern among dozens of developing countries. In the mid-1990s, China began blocking foreign websites and saw successful results, proving to other authoritarian countries wishing to control their constituents that these types of regulations are well worth the effort. Since then, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Azerbaijan, Syria and others have followed China’s footsteps and began implementing regulations censoring Internet activity.

This means that the people living within these countries are unable to access information from the outside world. Thus, they are fed filtered information that praises their leadership and government, and because they are not exposed to varying and contrary opinions, are susceptible to believing and accepting their government’s authoritarian policies. In western countries we often take our first amendment right for granted. We are allowed to say, write, and scream whatever we’d like about our government without the risk of being jailed or beaten. We’re allowed, even encouraged, to question policies and think differently. If only this were the case worldwide.

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All is not well at Twitter. Rumors about a rejigged timeline last week led to #RIPTwitter trending on the site and reassurances from Jack Dorsey did little to calm users' fears. But Twitter is failing to attract new users -- as today's earning's report shows -- and it is desperate to be seen listening to people, and providing tools that are valuable.

This is precisely why the micro-blogging site puts out feel-good stories about how it is tackling terrorists, shouts about beating online trolls, and goes out of its way to try to appeal to, and be useful to, people who don’t have an account yet. The move is the latest attempted to try to rejuvenate interest in the site which is failing to grow at the rate expected. It's an attempt to balance freedom of speech with control of those seen to be abusing the service.

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In something of a landmark ruling, the European Court of Human Rights says that websites cannot be held liable for comments left by readers. The ruling comes after a Hungarian website was sued over the content of messages left by readers.

The court said that if websites were held responsible for comments, it would constitute a breach of the right to free expression. Even in the case of 'offensive and vulgar' comments, providing nothing unlawful was written -- such as hate speech -- Hungarian news site Index.hu, and others, could not be held responsible for readers' comments.

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Apple may have said that it opposes the idea of weakening encryption and providing governments with backdoors into products, but things are rather different in China. The Chinese parliament has just passed a law that requires technology companies to comply with government requests for information, including handing over encryption keys.

Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the controversial law is the Chinese government's attempt to curtail the activities of militants and political activists. China already faces criticism from around the world not only for the infamous Great Firewall of China, but also the blatant online surveillance and censorship that takes place. This latest move is one that will be view very suspiciously by foreign companies operating within China, or looking to do so.

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UK consumers of porn will have to ask their ISP to provide them with access to X-rated content. As the government continues its futile bid to sanitize the web, new customers signing up for internet access with Sky will find that an adult content filter is enabled by default.

This means that anyone wanting to view content that has been deemed 'adult' will have to contact Sky to lift the block. The decision to make the content filter opt-out rather than opt-in was taken after it transpired that a mere 3 percent of existing users had taken the step of switching it on in the first year since its introduction in 2013.

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People who support freedom of speech are "foolish people" in Donald Trump's book. This is just the latest in a seemingly endless stream of sweeping generalizations and misguided utterances to fall from the mouth of the Republican presidential candidate.

Positioning himself as the spokesman for the "noisy majority", Trump yesterday appealed to the xenophobic electorate in suggesting "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States". This is the statement that has, understandably, grabbed the headlines, but Trump also wants to exert control over the technology we use every day. Specifically, he is interested in "closing up the internet in some way", and he wants to speak to Bill Gates about it.

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There are many problems with the censoring of online content, not least that it can limit free speech. But there is also the question of transparency. By the very nature of censorship, unless you have been kept in the loop you would simply not know that anything had been censored.

This is something the Electronic Frontier Foundation wants to change, and today the digital rights organization launches Onlinecensorship.org to blow the lid off online censorship. The site, run by EFF and Visualizing Impact, aims to reveal the content that is censored on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, and YouTube -- not just the 'what' but the 'why'. If you find yourself the subject of censorship, the site also explains how to lodge an appeal.

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