Harmful Content and Hate Speech

        That's Offensive!

 

        Often, the claims made in support or defense of censorship boil down to "harmful content" or "hate speech". Nowhere is that more true than on the most popular social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Each of those sites has a long history of vague terms, biased authority, and censorship. Nowhere do they have guidelines of what is to be interpretted as innapropriate or harmful, and nowhere do they have guidelines for what constitutes hate speech. Let's take a look at how each site operates.

"This video is unavailable with Restricted Mode enabled."

        YouTube is by far one of the most horrible opressors of free speech in the modern world. How did it all start? The first problem YouTube ran into was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In its first year, YouTube complied with over 30,000 copyright related takedown requests. Shortly thereafter, YouTube ran into regional problems. Opressive countries like Thailand and China completely blocked YouTube. In order to be financially viable in those countries, YouTube implemented regional censorship. Over the many years since its debut, YouTube has changed its policy several times, blocking more and more content. And each time the rules become even more vauge. Recently, Google has implemented several new features: Restricted Mode, Limited State, and YouTube Heroes. Not to mention, YouTube content creators have been demonotized for little to no reason, and their videos have even been deleted.

"#StopHateSpeech #SocialJustice #PoliticallyCorrect"

        Unlike Google, Twitter has taken it almost completely upon themselves to police the internet. They don't need the government to tell them to censor their users. They'll do it anyway! Twitter has a long history of muting and banning users for comments that may have offended people in the slightest way. Here is just one example of an ideological difference that prompted Twitter to lock someone's account. You can find more records of Twitter's censorship here.

"Like, Share, and Follow or you're a biggot!"

        After the last election cycle in France and the United States, allegations began to mount about the existence and effectiveness of so-called "fake news". Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell what is actually fake news or what is just something Facebook disagrees with. As of right now, Facebook labels "fake news" as such, but there are plans to remove it entirely. Read more here.

The Third World War - The Internet

        On Thursday, January 8th, 2015, the infamous NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, was quoted as saying the following in an interview with PBS NOVA. "When it comes to cyber warfare, we have more to lose than any other nation on earth. The technical sector is the backbone of the American economy, and if we start engaging in these kind of behaviors, in these kind of attacks, we're setting a standard, we're creating a new international norm of behavior that says this is what nations do. This is what developed nations do."

        Conventional warfare is no more. After World War 2, most of the world's nations signed peace accords, human rights declarations, and the people of the world dedicated themselves to peace. Edward Snowden hit the nail on the head with his analysis of the role that cyberwarfare plays in the modern world. Though we may never again see gruesome international conflicts that spill oceans of blood, we will see warfare that can bring about more death and destruction than the world has ever known.

        One might think that the most dangerous form of cyber warfare would be attacks on nuclear plants or power grids, but that is only a small fraction of the potential danger. To quote JFK, "... and there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment." Censorship is the agent that could bring levels of death and destruction never before seen. How is that possible? Let's answer the question with another question. What is it to live? Is it just to breathe; to survive; to keep moving? No. Life must have meaning. To us, it is not just the biological process. We are conscious and we make decisions. Decisions made without information, or without reliable information are not only threats to our conciousness, but to our health and safety. So when people with power impose censorship upon those without, it is quite literally one of the greatest threats to humanity - physically, spiritually, and intellectually.

        In the last post, I mentioned how the Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v United States has been completely forgotten or overlooked. The government cannot touch the mainstream media companies, but they can keep them away and they can do whatever they want to alternative media. Each presidential administration has chosen which media outlets have access to press briefings and which do not. The president could invite people only sympathetic to the opinions of the administration. Additionally, there have been hundreds of cases of government shutdowns of so-called "alternative media".

        The first example I'd like to draw attention to was the shutdown of Megaupload in 2012. Megaupload was a cloud service with at least 50 million registered users and at least 100 million daily visitors. The U.S. Department of Justice shut it down because some of its users broke laws. The majority of those infractions were related to copyright. In response, the internet exploded in retaliation. Anonymous shut down the websites for the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Copyright Office, Universal Music Group, and the Motion Picture Association of America. Thus, the introduction of the aforementioned warfare.

        With the shutdown of Megaupload, the government proved that it did not need more copyright laws like SOPA or PIPA to become a global censorship force. The Department of Justice could shutdown any website, any online media group, for any reason. If the Department of Justice could do it, then what about Homeland Security or the FBI? What about international government? What about other nations? Unfortunately, our country established a dangerous precedent, and it has been followed time and time again.

        According to legal-project.org, several countries already have laws regulating hate speech, and many more are drafting similar legislation. As governments and corporations crack down on the essence of conciousness, communication, and freedom itself, the people of the world have risen against tyranny once again. The resistance takes many different forms - sometimes legal, sometimes illegal. Some argue that the ends do not justify the means and fight back with marches and petitions. Here is just one example of this tactic. Others argue that rule of law has become opressive and will break the law to fight the system.

        Regardless of how people choose to fight this war, the war is being fought. The third world war is happening right now, right in front of our eyes. The game has changed. It used to be about controlling and policing the land - an empire with clear borders that can be drawn on the map. Now, it is about controlling the hearts and minds of people. Now, we are in the midst of the third world war.

        History doesn't always repeat itself, because history has never seen this. The internet isn't a tool. The internet isn't a place. The internet isn't an idea. The internet is humanity. If we lose the war for the internet, then we lose everything. You now have a choice. Fight so that you might yet live, or do nothing and it will be as if you are already dead. Hope lies in each and every one of us, and hope lies in all of us together, united in the spirit of humanity. And so we must not only declare it, but we must act on these words, "Live free or die."

The Societal and Personal Problem of Censorship

        Censorship seems to be a forgotten issue in the modern day - almost as if the topic itself has been censored. I'm not talking about the black bar or the annoying bleep censorship. I'm talking about the deliberate and atrocious act of withholding information from the public, and often subverting truth with lies. Often, we don't like to think that it happens. We don't want to believe it does. But it does, and it happens everywhere, all the time.

        Contrary to popular belief, censorship is not an action limited to governments. Individuals and groups of any kind can censor information, and historically this is quite true. Just recently, a widely followed and popular YouTube channel, Prager University (Not a real university) was the subject of Google's politically biased censorship. Many of their videos were blocked in YouTube's "Restricted Mode", for seemingly no apparent reason. Their channel talks about political issues and keeps their content clean and safe for general audiences. But, they have a conservative bias, which is what is suspected to be the reason behind their channel's censorship. Prager University tried for months to reach out to Google and resolve the issue. Not once were they ever in contact with a real person, just bots. It took a lawsuite for Google to issue a response. It said the following. "YouTube is an open platform and, to make it a great place for users, creators and advertisers, we provide different choices and settings. Restricted Mode is an optional feature used by a small subset of users to filter out videos that may include sensitive or mature content. Giving viewers the choice to opt in to a more restricted experience is not censorship. In fact, this is exactly the type of tool that Congress has encouraged online services to provide for parents and others interested in a more family-friendly experience online." But Google failed to explain why it was just targetting conservative videos, and more importantly, why restricted mode needs to exist in the first place.

        The fact remains that restricted mode targets content with a conservative bias. The fact remains that in many settings, especially educational settings, restricted mode is NOT optional. The fact remains that Google is aware of this and has done nothing about it. Therefore, the fact remains that this is deliberate and egregious censorship.

        The argument has been made that Google can do what they want because they're a private company. But Google has become a monopoly. Some might say that there are other sites on the internet where people can share their ideas, and while that is true, it is not a valid excuse for Google's actions. Google does not just offer a platform to share content; it is the size of the Sun compared to the size of the Moon. Google may not have a monopoly on platforms, but they have a monopoly on viewership, and they are now encouraging their viewers to become the judge and jury of content. With the introduction of theYouTube Heros program, users can mass flag and mass delete videos, without even watching them, talking to Google staff, or talking to the content creator.

 

If Google is allowed to censor peoples' content, then they are imposing their own law on the public domain. The public is the domain of the people. If we as people of the world allow this to continue, then we reaffirm Google's claim to ownership of all people. We, as a collective, must make ourselves heard and make Google listen to this message: "Don't be evil."

        But the problem of censorship does not end with Google. Many people choose to censor themselves. People are afraid of controversy. People are afraid of dissent. People are afraid of making their private thoughts public. Political correctness is but one of the new ideologies that encourages silence in order to avoid potentially offending people.

        After President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated, the CIA marked many of the investigation files as classified. Even after President Trump announced that all of the documents would be released in full, many documents had information redacted, blacked out, or simply cut off. Take this portion of an interview with the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Plans, Richard Helms.

The image source can be found here, from actual government archives. This particular image raises questions on the assassination of the President, but that is not the point. The point is that the government is still withholding information. Does the public not have a right to know what happened? Did the public not vote the President into office? This is but one example of the government withholding information from the people. In 1970, Richard Nixon ordered the press to not print anymore of the Pentagon Papers, although the order was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

In more recent years, that decision by the Supreme Court has been largely ignored. "The Press" as it has been known up until now was just the newspaper or the television news channels. But with the inception of the internet came a wave of enlightenment the amplitude of which no historical trend or event had ever come close to matching. The ongoing battle for the internet and the threat of internet censorship will be the topic of my next post.