Freedom of speech on social networks

The creation of the internet and the development of technologies that allow an increasingly faster and multifaceted communication from distance, have made the need to find protocols which will guarantee their harmonic and beneficial use more and more necessary. How we deal with freedom of speech on the internet is also an important question among others. The change of the communication context demands for new arrangements. If, for example, communication happens live at a square or at a bar, there are some characteristics as far as how, when and to whom we talk, which do not apply to distant, usually impersonal, anonymous and asynchronous communication. This essay processes freedom of speech on the internet and specifically on social networks.

To begin with, let’s define the notion of freedom of speech. As speech we should not see only written or oral verbal communication, but expression with every form and content, whether it’s a dance, a mathematical theorem, a sculpture, the construction of a machine and so on, at the present or stored in any medium. Freedom means that speech can take place without any obstacle by any person or group by any means, whether it is physical violence or threat, intimidation, slander, stigmatization, deprivation of resources and means of expression and so forth. On this essay in principle I support total freedom of speech for all people independently of their characteristics such as sex, race and lineage, sexual orientation, wealth, institutional recognition, age, physical ability and the rest. Thus all arguments are based on this position, which is not held as generally objectively right but as a political choice. There is not after all, as far as I know, some kind of objectively right ethics. It is us choosing our ethics and then based on that we can say whether something is objectively right or not. Of course everything has its limits, even freedom of speech. But before we get into that, let’s take a look at the importance of freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is a value of existential importance. We understand that we exist through interaction with ourselves and our environment. Being able to express ourselves and come in touch with the expression of others may be the only way for us to exist. On a more specific level, in a community the access to expression related to information is directly connected to the functionality of the community as well as its security. From our distant ancestors who as primates were observing their surroundings and in case of danger they would inform the rest of the community, to our contemporary societies in order to know from where we can find a job to how decisions which involve us as individuals or as groups are made, and which ideas and practices can make our lives better or worse, the unobstructed circulation of information is of vital importance. Information allows us to know what’s going on in our environment and our ways of action in it, thus we can make autonomous choices accordingly to our goals. Even more so in today’s society of information, because lack of access to information means inequality, among groups who have infinite access to it and groups who do not or have a partial one.

Most of the times, it is obvious that people and groups who ask for restrictions to freedom of speech want to impose their own narratives and to control others. A practice which is not related exclusively to totalitarian regimes who define themselves as such, but often to people and groups who declare that they defend freedom. For all the aforementioned reasons and even more, we owe to confront with great strictness whichever demand for concession of our freedom of speech, because we can easily be led to inexistence or darkness or both. In which cases and how should freedom of speech be limited though?

The general idea of limitation is that freedom of speech should not threat with harm the same community which is meant to protect and as a result itself. Freedom of speech is not set as an independent value, rather as a value for the existence of a community and the members who constitute it. Of course, we cannot record all the cases where we can express ourselves, but we can record most of those where we cannot, which have to be comparatively minimal. Actually as many cases as required to ensure the maximum freedom of speech possible. Some basic examples of limitation of expression is when it is related to slander, threat, blackmailing, harassment or offending dignity as well, to making public private or secret information, to calls to crimes against people and groups and to insemination of fake news which can harm society.

Without much thought it is obvious that these general cases cannot easily get specified. A basic reason is that what is harmful is relative to how harm is defined. In the case of slander for instance, if some people were vaguely accused of making profit by all means would consider this as slander, while others would do so only if there was a specific accusation like theft. We have to look very carefully at how we can deal with this issue, because we can easily get to stupid conclusions, giving in to our desire to make some general rules no matter what.

We must have clear in our minds that there cannot be general rules applying to all cases. That has a serious consequence: there is no sort of priesthood – in the case of social networks this of their administrators – able to produce universal rules and replace totally the local communities that these rules are aimed at. The semantics of facts change accordingly to age and place. To one society an invitation to a game with people throwing stones at one another is crime, to another it is a game. To a person it is indifferent to be sworn at by someone, to another it is traumatic and there are many cases of people who commit suicide because of the stigmatization and the outcry taking place at social networks. In a society during a warfare period it is logical for calls to armed battle to happen. Let’s see then, how and to what extent we can deal totally with these issues.

Maximum freedom of speech remains our main point of reference. Another point of reference is the objective definition of harm. For example, I do not consider display of pornography as something that should be censored, given that it has occurred along with the consent of all parties. On the objective part, sexual act is just another function of the human body and it is no more harmful than drinking water. On the contrary child pornography – where it is doubted whether there can be consent – cannot be allowed. An invitation to a consensual game of throwing stones through the internet is not a call to harm rather than a conscious game. Swearing at person does not mean anything by itself. Generally speaking, nobody got any harm because someone else called them an asshole. However, if there is some sort of constant harassment and humiliation of somebody’s personality, there how traumatic can that be should be taken into consideration. If someone gets slandered about doing something really bad, it is objective truth that they will most probably suffer social violence. A public invitation to a protest cannot be an offense, it is an elementary right. On the contrary, a public invitation to bomb attacks during a peace period is an invitation to a crime that can cost human lives. Of course, we should not forget state terrorism. Recently at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki a police officer shot head straight an unarmed protesting student with a flashbang grenade just a few meters away from him and injured him. The greek government expressed its support to this act and called the police to continue its work. This is a call to criminal activity, but it cannot be censored because it does not call to something specific and even more so because people must be aware of their government’s policies. A position for or against the presence of police within universities’ campus would not be censored either. Neither a person whether they take a position for or against the coronavirus pandemic vaccines. If nonetheless they claimed that the vaccines have harmful ingredients on purpose, something for which there is no evidence, they would be censored. It is a kind of propaganda that has happened and has cost lives as misinformation.

By now, it probably gets evident that my position is that something falling in the categories to be censored, can be censored only if it objectively causes specific very serious damage in fact and not if it is generally harmful and it can potentially lead to something very negative. And this is the case even more so, because something is exclusively harmful or beneficial very rarely. For instance, someone could reasonably claim that calling to the construction of an airline company would lead to harming the environment. However, we live in a society where use of airplanes is very common and it also helps to the networking (scientists, activists etc) who positively contribute to the management of environmental issues. Such an invitation could not be censored. As well as satire cannot be easily censored at all. Anybody towards anybody and for any subject can do satire. Even if it hurts sometimes, people who have been hurt included. A democracy is based upon its people’s right to offend one another and doubt one another. It is based upon being able to listen to people that we don’t like saying things that we don’t like and to understand that for every fact there are different interpretations than ours.

We should bear in mind that when speaking about freedom of speech on social networks, we actually speak about their part which constitutes a digital public space. There are differences between a public, a social and a private space. In private space, like at our home or a digital private conversation we can put some very personal terms about whom with hang out with. In social space, as a club or a group on a social network there can also be some more specific rules of communication. In public space, like in the street or a public post on the internet, rules can only be the minimum – taking into account whether we like it or not the relative laws of the state that a place is incorporated into – given the amount of people there and their diversity, so that coexistence is possible without constant collisions and marginalization.

It has to be clear to us that there is no such thing as perfect solution. In whatever we do, we gain something and we lose something. For instance, someone could claim that by allowing insulting content some people according to their subjective experience could have a hardship. It is obvious that we have to listen to subjective experience and take it into account, but there is no point even to discuss without objectivity. If so to say anybody could claim they are right just because they express their opinion. Moreover I consider it principally more important to minimize a prohibition rather than universally decrease the ability of people to express and exist, and being binded by more rules. A society of appropriateness is miserable and oppressing from whatever perspective it occurs. And this is a political choice on my part of course. Besides, there is people’s personal responsibility on how and with what they interact. An electronic platform provides some protocols that facilitate communication. It is not some sort of big brother to protect users in their absence. We aim at the autonomy of people and the society of responsibility where all its members take care of the others and themselves, not at a society where its members wait rightfully for an institution to make decisions for them and replace them.

So as to focus on what happens in the cases which the general protocol cannot deal with, a solution is to emphasize not only prohibition or punishment, but the ability of the users to choose the content they get in touch with. That they can exclude people from seeing their content, they can choose the content they get in touch with and that this content can be evaluated so that they can read for example what they prefer. Additionally if there are people moderating a possible ban of comments, it is important that they are trained in communication and that they have knowledge of the context (social, cultural etc) within which the comments occur. And of course we should bear in mind that the internet cannot fully replace human relations and that as a society – judging by the quality of the content of social network posts – we still have a lot of steps to do in order to learn to have empathy and respect towards other people and be able to have a dialogue.

What happens as far as methods of moderating content are concerned when this breaks the rules of the community as I have described them above? Depending on the severity and the frequency of the violation through posts, the moderators of a platform can message the violators urging them to comply with the rules, they can flag a post as problematic, they can hide a post leaving it accessible though to whomever wants to see it and they can delete the post. As far as the person doing the problematic posts is concerned, besides notifications and the aforementioned measures do not work or a very serious violation has happened then they can have a temporary prohibition to make posts and as a last resort their accounts permanently suspended.

Apart from the rules governing the behavior of users with regard to freedom of speech, rules about the relative moderation are also necessary. All community rules have to be clear and accessible to all members of the community, who will be able to knowledgably choose their participation in it, and the rules should be applied without bias to all cases where moderators can intervene. The software must be open – source and have a clear function, without having any hidden moderating function. The data of the members must belong to them and after a certain amount of time they could be deleted if the members wish so. The software must be free to use, so that in the case that a portion of people does not want to participate with a platform’s terms could make a platform of its own instead of being forced to comply with a specific set of rules because of lack of alternatives. When there is some kind of penalty by the moderators this should be as clearly justified on evidence based on the rules as possible, and of course people who moderate should take the responsibility of applying a penalty and should be able to be judged by the community as far as the right application of rules by them is concerned.

Finally, when and as much as this is possible and suitable, an electronic platform should facilitate relations among its members and avoid being completely impersonal. Let’s not forget that we do not have to do with content producing machines but with people who have their own day to day life and history. There should be feedback between members and administration, so that a division between priesthood and an audience is not imposed in order to find a common ground for expression and needs. So, based on all that has been said till now, the effort to achieve a convergence among maximum freedom of speech which is the first priority, understanding objectively serious harm in the context that it is happening, inclusivity of the community’s needs and existent local laws should be exhaustive. Let’s have platforms which facilitate expression, sharing and coexistence incorporating as many people as possible with respect to diversity and the personality of each and every one.