From Motherboard, the Vice channels. Screen shot.On 9 February, Twitter announced the creation of the Trust and Safety Council, a body comprising 40 organisations and individuals from civil society and academia, tasked with “ensur[ing] that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter”. The move is clearly a response to specific criticism of Twitter and its perceived inadequacies in dealing with hate speech — a theme so popular and well-trodden that it recently spawned a parody account.
It also reflects a broader tonal shift in narratives around the internet, and especially social media, which has taken place over the last few years. The digital environment is increasingly spoken of in terms of a ‘cesspool’, where free expression — corrupted by perceived anonymity — has spilled over into endemic abuse, for which the only remedy is increased moderation or censorship. Some human rights constituencies — particularly those working with minorities and women, the primary targets of online abuse — now see the internet almost exclusively as a negative space, as I discovered recently while attending a conference on minority rights.
Silicon Valley is also paying attention to this trend. Late last year, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt wrote an op-ed in the New York Times which argued for “tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media — sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment”. At Davos, Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg argued that targeted campaigns of ‘counter-speech’ could help defeat ISIS. In a climate of heightened fears over extremism, there is an increasing willingness to see these businesses not as platforms for expression, but as censors, or arbiters of appropriate behaviour. As a human rights defender, I find this troubling.
