Go
Daddy.
Twitter.
Facebook.
You
Tube.
Google.
Apple.
These
are some of the tech giants that currently rule the Internet. Virtually any piece of information can’t
fully circulate unless it goes through at least one of these channels. So what happens when they begin to edit,
censor, or ban certain images, content or websites?
We
live in an Information Society, but also one of disinformation and fake
news. We also now find ourselves in a
censored era, one that doesn’t come from the controls of government but from a
handful of corporate entities that may mean well but too often cut off the
free-flowing exchange of ideas and information that the Internet was supposed
to usher in.
We
need unfettered free speech online, otherwise we risk trampling what this
nation is all about. Are we to let a
handful of anonymous techies secretly limit what we can see, think or
discuss? Like a virus, this behavior is
spreading widely and quickly.
For
instance, Go Daddy, a dominant web-hosting site, will dump sites it believes
violate its terms of service. Of course
if a site rips people off or violates the law, Go Daddy has a duty to shut them
down. But when a site expresses a
viewpoint that Go Daddy disagrees with should it exercise its corporate might
to close them? Today it boots a Neo-Nazi
site; tomorrow maybe it dumps Black Lives Matter, and eventually it shutters
sites that take extreme views on any hot-button topic. Who is to say which
views should be heard?
Look
at Gab, a new Twitter-like app, that’s been banned by Apple. Why?
Because Gab, unlike Twitter, wants to let any posts to get placed
without censorship. Basically, Gab will
follow the First Amendment to dictate what goes up online.
Free
speech will always confound us. We hear
something that sounds so vile, so negative, so hateful and we want to silence
that voice. But unless they commit a
crime or directly incite violence, we should just ignore it or counter it with
better speech. It’s better to get all
thoughts and ideas out in the open – and to publicly challenge them rather than
for people to secretly harbor delusional thoughts that go unchallenged.
We
can’t fight ignorance without exposing it.
We can’t say we have free speech when we silence our critics. We can’t let words be stronger than our
values.
It’s
not easy. A lot of companies wish they
didn’t have to police their business this way.
A lot of consumers wish something wonderful, like Facebook, wouldn';t be
used to spread hate and ignorance. But the digital world must mirror the real
world and allow for the First Amendment to be a living, breathing ideal. We must remain tolerant and optimistic in the face of hate, bigotry, and
lying.
Take
a look at what Cloudflare did. The site protects people from cyberattacks. The
Daily Stormer, a bulletin board for self-proclaimed White supremacists, was
using Cloudflare until the company kicked it off.
Mr. Prince, the co-founder
and CEO of Cloudflare, recently questioned his company's own decision in a Wall Street
Journal op-ed, highlighting the problems with companies acting as censors. He
wrote:
“The
upshot is that a few private companies have effectively become the gatekeepers
to the public square – the blogs and social media that serve as today’s
soapboxes and pamphlets. If a handful of
tech executives decide to block you from their services, your content
effectively can’t be on the internet…
“Did
we meet the standard of due process in this case? I worry we didn’t. And at some level I’m not sure we ever could. It doesn’t sit right to have a private
company, invisible but ubiquitous, making editorial decisions about what can
and cannot be online. The pre-internet
analogy would be if Ma Bell listened in on phone calls and could terminate your
line if it didn’t like what you were talking about.”
Free
speech comes at a high price. We need to
pay that price or find out later that we sold off our most precious right of
all.
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