by
Les May
THE
Financial Times (FT) recently carried an editorial
about Facebook which included the following;
‘The
platform does not intentionally cause harm to users. Too often,
however, Facebook’s business model allows harm to occur. The
biggest problem is Facebook’s refusal to acknowledge that to a
large degree it is a publisher, not just a digital town square.’
The
editors of Northern Voices (NV) carry out their job
under the guiding principle that freedom of speech is having the
right to tell people what they do not want to hear. But that does
not mean that there is any obligation upon them to publish anything
and everything that is sent to them. As editors, they are treated by
the law as the publishers of NV if, for example,
someone claims they have been defamed or, an article is considered to
incite violence or racial hatred. In other words if an article
causes harm the actions of the editor are considered intentional.
As
the FT article points out these strictures do not apply
to Facebook because it claims NOT to be a publisher.
In other words blogs like NV are expected to maintain
higher standards in policing, and I use the word deliberately, their
content for hate promoting or defamatory material, than Facebook.
Indeed Facebook benefits enormously when such material is posted on
the platform because it leads to a backlash from people who disagree.
The more extreme the material, the greater the backlash, the more
revenue it generates for Facebook.
The
eagerness with which some people resort to calling something ‘hate
speech’ or ‘hate crime’
whenever something is said or done which they do not like, only
serves to obscure the real problem which is that some Facebook groups
use the platform to incite hatred of, and violence toward, other
ethnic groups. This played a part in the events in Myanmar where
Rohingya
and other
muslims were targeted and the violence at Charlottesville.
There’s an expectation that
Facebook will act against the white-supremacist and neo-nazi groups
which orchestrated the violence at Charlottesville. (In this case I
think the use of the word ‘nazi’ is justified.)
And
who could object if they did take down these posts when and wherever
they occurred? The people posting
this
stuff
are
well beyond the pale. A war was fought to rid the world of
ideologies like these.
But
wait a minute. As I have written previously the bar for what
constitutes hate speech or a hate crime is constantly being lowered.
Do we really trust a private company to decide
what is acceptable? Do we really trust any government to do it?
Here’s
why I don’t.
The people who run Twitter have
published policies about what constitutes hateful conduct here.
Scroll
down a bit and you’ll find the line, ‘This
includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender
individuals.’
In other words if you genuinely
believe that someone with a full set of wedding tackle does not
qualify to be considered a woman, just because he says he is, you’ll
be contravening Twitter’s policies unless you refer to him as
‘she’.
Recently
a
panel of five judges sitting as the Supreme Court gave a ruling which
reinforces our right to free speech and ensures that we cannot be
forced to express views that we disagree with. This
was a case in which a
Christian couple declined to supply a cake decorated with the words
‘Support Gay Marriage’.
Twitter
disagrees; if
you want to use the platform the price you may
have
to pay is being forced to express a view you disagree with.
Canadian freelance journalist, Meghan Murphy, has been permanently
banned for allegedly ‘deadnaming’ a trans person. When discussing
a story of a trans woman
who was taking a bunch of beauticians to court for
refusing to wax his balls,
she
used
the phrase ‘yeah it’s him’.
Following
the ‘gay wedding cake’ ruling the
chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said:
‘Freedom
of expression – including the right not to express a view – and
freedom of belief are rightfully protected in a democratic society
and this case demonstrates the need for a more nuanced debate about
how we balance competing rights’.
A
nuanced
debate would lead to something between Twitter’s insistence on
telling people what they must think if they want to use the platform
and Facebook’s
‘we’re
not a publisher’.
I doubt there will be one.
I
have
no axe to grind on this because I
use neither Facebook nor Twitter.
And
I don’t think I’m missing much!
*******
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