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YouTube regularly censors videos, demonetizes creators, and introduces new censorship rules. Yet in a recent interview, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki claimed that the platform wants to enable "as much free speech as we possibly can have."
Wojcicki made the comments during an interview with Indonesian journalist Najwa Shihab when she was asked for YouTube's view on governments using regulations to curtail free speech. In her response, Wojcicki framed YouTube as a free speech champion.
“In general, we wanna enable political speech. So…when we do get requests that would involve suppression of political speech, that’s a place where…we’re very…hesitant or resistant to removing it,” Wojcicki said.
She continued by adding the caveat that "every case depends on what's happening" before making an even bolder claim about YouTube's supposed free speech values:
“We want to enable people to express their points of view and enable as much free speech as we possibly can have.”
Wojcicki followed up by claiming that YouTube also stands up for free speech against non-democratically elected governments.
“If you, for example, have a non-democratically elected government and they’re asking us to remove content that would be suppressing free speech of people who are being persecuted in some way, that’s a place…where it would be harder for us to...remove that content," Wojcicki said. "We would keep it up.”
Shihab pressed Wojcicki on her purported free speech stance by asking the YouTube CEO whether she believes in censorship. Shihab suggested that censorship could be counterproductive when it comes to fighting "misinformation" and that having a free flow of information rather than censorship could be a better solution.
Despite claiming that YouTube wants to enable as much free speech as possible earlier in the interview, Wojcicki responded to this question by saying: “There are lines that we draw that we think…don’t make sense for us to have on our platform.”
The YouTube CEO said that adult content was one of the first categories that YouTube banned because allowing it would have changed the nature of YouTube. However, she continued by describing other vaguer categories of content that are banned to appease advertisers:
"If we have a lot of content that is seen as undesirable or not supporting society or not being responsible, we'll also see pullback from our advertising community. So...we wanna do the right thing but we also as a business, I believe, operate very differently than say the internet as a whole where people can go and post their information."
This isn't the first time Wojcicki and other high-ranking YouTube executives have attempted to frame YouTube as a free speech platform.
Last year, Wojcicki was given a free expression award from a pro-First Amendment group at an awards ceremony sponsored by YouTube. She also previously said that celebrating freedom of speech is a "core value" at YouTube. And earlier this year, YouTube's Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan, claimed that YouTube is an "open platform" where anyone can share ideas "without gatekeepers."
Despite these claims from its executives, YouTube's actions tell a different story. In Q2 2022, YouTube removed more than a million videos for violating its far-reaching rules around "hate speech," "harassment," "harmful" content, and "misinformation." This quarter, YouTube has continued to censor popular creators and journalists and update its censorship rules.
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During a “listening session” at the White House on tech platforms’ accountability, the Biden administration renewed calls for reforms to Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, which shields tech platforms from liability from content posted by users.
During his campaign trail in January 2020, President Joe Biden called for the removal of Section 230.
The call was renewed during the listening session, which was attended by Biden’s high-level advisers, child safety and health experts, DC’s Attorney General Karl Racine, and the CEOs of smart speaker company Sonos, and Mozilla.
There were no representatives from Big Tech companies, with Meta and Google confirming they were not invited.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was not straightforward when asked why Big Tech companies were not invited.
Aside from the removal of Section 230, the Biden administration announced six other reforms to hold tech platforms “accountable,” including making algorithms transparent and to stop them from discriminating against marginalized groups, as well as better competition policies.
Politicians across the political spectrum want to reform Section 230.
However, Republicans and Democrats do not have the same motives for removing the liability protection. While Republicans want it removed under the belief it would mean online platforms can be held liable for censorship, Democrats want it removed so that platforms can be held liable for allowing harmful content like “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and extremist content.
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In March, President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring a comprehensive review of the cryptocurrency industry. People familiar with the matter told The Washington Post that the Treasury Department has prepared reports, and that the reports recommend major regulation of the cryptocurrency industry.
The reports note that cryptocurrencies pose an economic danger in several areas. The review concluded that crypto is not a "threat" to the stability of the financial system at large, but that could change abruptly.
Related: Canada to review the & of cryptocurrencies after Freedom Convoy protesters subverted crackdown
According to the sources, who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity, one of the reports focuses on stablecoins, a form of digital currency whose value is pegged to the dollar. Earlier this year, a stablecoin called Terra collapsed, resulting in a downturn in the broader crypto market.
As lawmakers consider federal rules for the digital assets sectors, it is pushing to be regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), instead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is considered stricter. Already, there are three bipartisan bills in Congress that favor the CFTC as the regulator of the crypto sector.
The Treasury is yet to weigh in on the issue of the regulator of the industry.
“Treasury is trying to create the analytical basis for very strong oversight of this sector of finance,” one of The Post’s sources said. “They’re also hoping that with this kind of report, it becomes hard to have regulations that back off of tough oversight of the industry. This framework would serve as a benchmark, to say ‘Let’s be focused on these risks and not be carried away with the technology and industry promises.’”
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Last week, internet infrastructure and security company Cloudflare deviated from its traditionally neutral stance of making its free security tools as widely available as possible when it blocked the online forum Kiwi Farms. The decision is the third time since 2017 that Cloudflare has terminated or blocked access to its services and reflects a growing and concerning trend of deplatforming campaigns going beyond where the content is hosted and targeting essential pieces of internet infrastructure such as security providers.
Defenders of Kiwi Farms argue that it's one of the few sites that allows true free speech online. The most popular content on the site is usually discussions of online personalities such as commentators and streamers.
However, critics of Kiwi Farms argue that it's a hate site that enables harassment, doxxing, (the online publication of private personal information, such as personal addresses and phone numbers, without consent), and swatting (a harassment technique where false crime reports are made with the intent of eliciting an armed police response against an innocent target).
In the weeks leading up to Cloudflare blocking Kiwi Farms, criticism of the site had gone mainstream after transgender activist Keffals and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed the site for targeting them with swattings. This culminated in a "#DropKiwiFarms" campaign which demanded that Cloudflare and other digital service providers cut off Kiwi Farms. Cloudflare initially resisted the pressure but ultimately blocked Kiwi Farms.
While deplatforming has become pervasive on social media, the unique position of Cloudflare's security services in the internet infrastructure stack makes being blocked from these services much more consequential.
Cloudflare's free security services protect more than 20% of the internet from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and other types of cyberattacks. Without this protection, most of these sites would be targeted by activists, flooded with malicious traffic and quickly taken offline. This makes Cloudflare's protection akin to an essential internet utility that's necessary for sites to stay online.
Cloudflare has acknowledged this utility-like quality of its security services and stated that the power to terminate security services" is "not a power Cloudflare should hold."
Cloudflare's reasoning is based on its guiding principle that organizations that host content are closer to the content and therefore well positioned to make content moderation decisions. Security services, on the other hand, are much further away from the content and most closely resemble internet utilities which should remain neutral and follow legal and due process.
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"Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in consultation with politicians, policy makers, and experts that turning off security services because we think what you publish is despicable is the wrong policy," Cloudflare said in a recent blog post.
Cloudflare has said that cyberattacks are "not the appropriate mechanism for addressing problematic content online" and argued that selectively pulling its security services sets a dangerous precedent:
"Some argue that we should terminate these services to content we find reprehensible so that others can launch attacks to knock it offline. That is the equivalent argument in the physical world that the fire department shouldn't respond to fires in the homes of people who do not possess sufficient moral character. Both in the physical world and online, that is a dangerous precedent, and one that is over the long term most likely to disproportionately harm vulnerable and marginalized communities."
Yet, despite this guiding principle, there are two previous moments where Cloudflare has deviated from this neutral stance. In 2017, it terminated the Neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer and in 2019 it terminated the online imageboard 8chan.
Cloudflare has acknowledged that these decisions resulted in a "deeply troubling response" where it saw "a dramatic increase in authoritarian regimes attempting to have us terminate security services for human rights organizations." When blocking Kiwi Farms, Cloudflare also admitted that the decision only "temporarily addresses the situation" and "by no means solves the underlying problem."
Cloudflare's infrequent but repeated abandonment of this neutrality is just one of many examples of pressure campaigns going beyond hosting providers. In many cases, these campaigns have been successful and resulted in users losing access to the internet infrastructure that's necessary to connect to the internet or stay online.
Recently, several websites were taken offline in Austria after a sweeping block against Cloudflare internet protocol (IP) addresses. The blocking instructions were supposed to target pirate websites but because Cloudflare IP addresses were included in the order, a wide range of non-piracy websites were also blocked. In this instance, no explanation was given until the internet service providers (ISPs) published the blocking instructions.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Cloudflare was asked to stop providing security services to websites in Russia and Belarus. The decision would have resulted in many Russian citizens losing access to the information on sites protected by Cloudflare. However, Cloudflare rejected the request and argued that "Russia needs more internet, not less."
And over the last few years, Cloudflare has faced increased pressure from large copyright holders who attempt to get Cloudflare to block access to sites, even when it hosts none of the infringing content. In 2020, Cloudflare set a new precedent by blocking a piracy site and in 2021, it was ordered to block a pirate site, despite hosting none of the site's content.
These attempts to target important pieces of internet infrastructure aren't just aimed at Cloudflare. The Internet Archive, which is supposed to be a neutral historical archive of webpages, has also removed content on copyright grounds. After mainstream media outlets complained that its archives were allowing "misinformation" to spread, the Internet Archive started adding warning labels and "fact-checks" to its archives. Several sites, including Kiwi Farms, have even been outright excluded from the Internet Archive.
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Two months ago, the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) faced backlash for expelling an incoming student for posting sexually explicit Japanese-style cartoon (hentai) images on a pseudonymous, personal Twitter account. After pressure from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the student was reinstated.
However, the institute appears not to have learned anything as it has updated its social media policy to further restrict free speech.
The previous policy banned “inappropriate use of electronic media” to spread “inappropriate…[or] annoying…messages or communications.”
The policy was updated from one paragraph to three paragraphs, and now bans “bullying” and inflicting “distress to others” be it “intentionally or unintentionally.”
Private institutions are not required to respect the First Amendment, which guarantees free expression. However, like other private institutions, KCAI has committed to uphold “free speech and open assembly,” and it is, therefore, reasonable for students and faculty to expect their freedom of expression to be respected.
The new policy might punish students for inflicting “distress on others” whether it is intentional or not. But what some might find distressing is not distressing to others.
Additionally, according to FIRE, for speech to qualify as “bullying”, it should qualify as peer harassment, as was defined in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education.
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On Wednesday, four journalists from Mada Masr, one of the few remaining independent outlets in Egypt, were charged over one article about an upcoming corruption inquiry into members of the dominant party in the country’s parliament, the Nation’s Future Party. The charges include insulting members of Parliament, misusing social media, and publishing fake news.
Nation’s Future Party is closely associated with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who seized power in 2013 following a military takeover. Under his regime, independent reporting has been highly suppressed, with multiple outlets blocked and dozens of journalists arrested.
Mada Masr is one of the outlets that have been blocked in Egypt but continues to publish articles criticizing the government. The article that resulted in the journalists being charged cited anonymous sources within Nation’s Future Party claiming that there would be a “purge” of top officials implicated in corruption and other crimes, the Times reported.
Nation’s Future Party filed complaints accusing the journalists of “insult, slander, and defamation,” according to the outlet. The journalists that were charged, however, did not work on the article.
But they did work on a daily news bulletin that included the article.
The founder and editor of Mada Masr, Lina Attah, is facing an additional charge of running a news site without a license.
The four journalists that have been charged, including Attah, were questioned for hours on Wednesday before being released on bail. It is not clear if prosecutors will pursue the case.
“Mada Masr affirms the integrity of its reporting and its commitment to professional journalistic standards,” the outlet wrote in an article covering the complaints filed by Nation’s Future Party. “It considers the publication of news in relation to the party which holds a majority in Parliament and possesses close ties to the government to be in the public interest.”
It is not the first time the Egyptian government has attempted to silence Mada Masr. In 2020, Attah, the outlet’s founder, was arrested while reporting outside a prison, and released the same day. In 2019, the outlet’s offices were raided and four editors and reporters were arrested. They were released after the government caved to international pressure.
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Reviewed by Diogenes
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September 09, 2022
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