Making universal declarations is easy but not very useful. Real work is done by grappling with the actual limitations. I'd have a lot more respect for a maximalist position that at least understood why some people legitimately reject that position, and not just because they're stinky meanie snowflake boo-boos.
Without that I expect governments to say "thank you for your unrealistic statement, we'll now ignore it and implement whatever we feel like because you're not saying anything to engage with."
The standard of debate and progress of the UK Online Safety Bill offered ample evidence of an era in which complex, reasonable and nuanced debate, and appeal to the reasonability of governments, is over.
Which is what this is all about really.
Post classical democracy it's all about power, and who shouts the loudest. The voices in this impressive list of academics extolling the noble fight for Truth through free-speech seem like "the wind in dry grass".
they, and yourself, are appealing to modes of argument and disputation the enemy no longer recognises.
Already "censorship" seems too narrow a take of what's happening. It's about shaping the narrative, about shutting up your voice, and making sure the "right" ones get heard. The digital technological landscape is the battleground for this new epistemology.
Truth, if it has a future, will either have to find a way outside the digital realm, or learn to celebrate its illegitimacy within it.
As opposed to previous eras of democracy?
For instance, the US Postal System does not run my mail through content classifiers and filters to determine whether my mail should be suppressed or passed through. If I mail a death threat, the postal system will dutifully deliver it. Despite this, the government may still prosecute me for it. The government's ability to prosecute me for mailing illegal things is not contingent on the postal system having some nanny AI that reads my mail and shadow-bans me when it disapproves. Having laws that restrict speech does not necessitate creating automatic censorship systems. And "..but with computers" doesn't change this.
They are asking for gov to abide by UDHR which is limited to politically motivated censorship
And the common factor in all of these is that the problem with them is not speech. It's something going beyond speech. A threat is a threat--it's not protected because it's a threat of harm, not because it expresses something someone disagrees with or thinks is "misinformation". Libel and slander aren't protected because of the effects of false information on someone's reputation and ability to make a living, not because they don't meet someone's fact-checking standards.
In other words, these are not problems with "unlimited free speech". They are problems with particular acts that, in addition to being "speech", are also something else, and it's the "something else" that is the problem.
What this declaration is against, OTOH, is limiting speech that is just speech--it doesn't fall into any of the categories described above (or other exceptions like "yelling fire in a crowded theater" that have the same issues)--but happens to express opinions or views that some people disagree with or find offensive. That kind of speech should be unlimited.
You might argue that John’s speech isn’t a direct issue and is a matter of political opinion and should be unlimited. Jane might argue that the speech is directly dangerous.
Your framing doesn’t solve this issue - it just adjusts the point at which we adjudicate it, doesn’t it?
That amendment includes the right to freedom of association as well as the aforementioned freedom of the press, which are precisely the freedoms platforms use to choose who is on them. The freedom to speak one's mind and Reddit's freedom to not transit that speech are the same amendment.
A recourse Truth Social demonstrates still exists.
Their closest analogy they would have to social media sites would be newspapers. Newspapers were never required to publish everything that came in to them. They'd find the notion absurd. They'd tell you to go out and buy your own printing press.
They might be distressed that a small set of private publishers would become so ubiquitous that they could be mistaken for being synonymous with speech in general. If it had occurred to them they might have given anti-trust legislation a firmer grounding in the Constitution. But that's a general matter of commerce, not specific to speech.
Either this is being done in bad faith by peddlers of BS, or it’s just intellectually lazy. Judging from the list of signatories, probably some of both.
Do we know that to be true, or do we hope that to be true?
Free speech is certainly pretty good against government-backed disinformation. Governments have a lot of power to push their POV anyway; add the ability to prosecute dissent to the mix and the system loses necessary feedback.
But I'm worried. I fear that governments flexing this kind of soft power over media companies now in recent years is a sign of the times. I am afraid that governments see major wars on the horizon and that's why they're dusting off their old bag of tricks and asking the new tech sort of media companies to get ready to respond to censorship requests when the time comes. So it's not the wartime suppression of information that worries me the most, but rather the upcoming war it hints at.
Edit: If anybody can talk me down from this fear, I would sincerely appreciate it.
What is new is that "media companies" now includes social media. I.e. what used to be real-life gossip has moved online, and been subjected to censorship. I should caution that it's not only government interference to fear - we don't want our public sphere to be moderated by giant corporations either.
we need more interreligious and interpolitical dialogue at every level of society. we need to actively encourage everyone to listen to the concerns of others. this doesn't happen by itself. it requires the creation of offline spaces and forums open to everyone where people can meet and interact and are invited and encouraged to do so without prejudice.
Are social media sites part of the CIC? To what extent should we choose to censor ourselves 'out of consideration' to others? Today seems like a timely time to have this discussion.
If you are American you are safe because political speech has a high level of protection in the US.
If like me you are non American - even if you are from a G8 nation, you are watching your right to criticize the government slowly errode. But even if you are American, can you really go to court over a social media post.
There should be something that at least restricts government action to the limits set out in the constitution
The opposition to this and the indifference of the population generally suggests the age of free speech is over.
These conversations get mired in debate over free speech maximalism or what is disinformation. I think that's besides the point.
Perhaps a better question would be when is it okay to suppress speech. On what basis do we measure and catalog harmful speech or disinformation.
I can see some, like speech calling for violence against certain groups. But that's already illegal. What about when government goes outside established frameworks to also protect 'truth' from disinformation or catalogs some opinions as harmful.
I'm religious, I believe in ultimate truths, so I have ideas of misinformation and disinformation.
But our governments today are secular. They don't believe in ultimate truths - so on what basis can they claim something is disinfo or misinformation and suppress it?
When we say harmful info or discourse - harmful to who. I haven't been hurt, I don't know anyone who has. I do however see governments and corporations being harmed by speech online.
Isn't the real issue that there is a new medium the internet that lets ordinary people speak freely and this is very uncomfortable for the political and business elites and they wish to suppress that.
Isn't the question not really about free speech but more about how much control can States exercise over channels of public communications before they can reasonably be called tyrannical?
