Protecting Free Speech in an age of Hate

It’s now mid-2020 — it’s not uncommon to hear of social media companies such as Facebook and YouTube removing content and sometimes creators who go against their community guidelines and policies, with rules specifically targeting what they call ‘hate speech.’

In an attempt to appear more inclusive to stakeholders and to secure the funding required for their platform, social media companies have approached ‘hate speech’ with liberal use of censorship.

And while they have every right to police what content lies on their sites, how can we be sure that such decisions are made with unbiased regard for political stance or controversial view?

I quite frankly don’t believe they can.

Hate speech may inspire acts of violence. Online, it may bind people of shared opinions. But expressing one’s views alone has never caused violence. the silencing of unpopular opinion as we’ve seen on sites like twitter does not remove beliefs from the minds of those who shared them; it merely allows people to migrate to the depths of the internet, isolating them from viewpoints that challenge their own.

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

John Gillmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

If we as a society are genuinely concerned by the rise of conflicting views, beliefs which have the potential to incite real harm, we must ideally engage with them; fight free speech with free speech.

In a theoretical civilisation, with people of high regard and integrity, the concept of free speech works. However, issues arise in environments of pseudonymity. The internet, with its loopholes and obstacles to traditional communication, makes for an unregulated wasteland of arrogant opinion and self-righteous know-it-alls. It is eventually up to us, the users, through our conduct and critical thinking, to counteract the tides of extremist views.