We need to debate limits to free speech in digital era
Nearly half a century ago, the Star’s long campaign for a ban on hate speech collided with a famous hater.
It was at the beginning of the culture wars that bedevil our political discourse still. My father’s editorial in defence of Pierre Trudeau’s new Hate Literature Act set off a legal battle that lasted nearly a decade.
The Star won a pyrrhic victory in the end, a favourable judgment without full reimbursement of its huge costs, let alone damages.
A vicious newsletter attacking Trudeau was the trigger for the battle. It was the product of a partnership between two men, one a non-entity — a plain vanilla white, racist anti-Semite — the other a more memorable figure. In the decades since his defection to Canada as a Soviet spy, Igor Gouzenko had morphed from a defender of freedom to a hateful, homophobic Cold Warrior.
The editorial cited their latest pamphlet, which insinuated that Pierre Trudeau was a homosexual agent of the Soviet Union, as a good example of why hate speech was incompatible with democracy. Gouzenko sued the Star for what was, at the time, a large sum. The Star’s ultimate legal victory, along with others, set the boundaries of acceptable speech for a generation: You may not broadcast, publish or bellow in the public square an incitement to violence or a call for genocide against any group. Then came the internet. The combination of an anonymous, free, universally accessible, globally distributed new communication tool brought the trolls out from their caves once more. In the early years of the net, from 1996-2007, the internet’s network owners –– those who moved the data traffic, like power utilities or phone companies — successfully claimed they could not be held liable for the trash some people were pushing down their pipes.
By this decade, the time of the explosion of today’s social media giants, Facebook, Twitter and Google, that claim became harder to defend. How was Facebook, which offered a curated news stream for its billion viewers, in any different role than a broadcaster or a newspaper publisher? Still, the media giants resisted being held to account for the hate speech they gave increasing access and visibility to.
Then came the Obama presidency and all the racist birther and other attacks he was assaulted with. Daesh’s (also known as ISIS or ISIL) use of Twitter and “dark net” apps to sully the world with their gruesome videos of brutal torture and execution increased the pressure. Zuckerberg et al. were pushed, grudgingly, to the recognition that they needed to develop filters — human and digital — for obscenity and hate. Then came Charlottesville.
American fascists rallied their supporters to attack on the net and used their many websites to celebrate the death of Heather Heyer and revel in Donald Trump’s ambiguity about their essential evil.
Finally, internet pipeline companies and social media giants began to shut down the most egregious offenders’ digital access, forcing some fascists to Russian websites for protection. How painful that must be for the remaining veterans of the Soviet Union’s loss of tens of millions of its own citizens in defeating fascism the first time.
The restraint of free speech is one of the most painful and delicate tasks for any democracy seeking to find the balance between incitement and acceptable political agitation. Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, one of those who decided to dump very profitable racists from his network — until then a home to many of the most offensive — agonized in print about his decision. “What gives him the right” to decide the boundaries of free speech, when he is merely an internet company executive, he wondered?
Once again, it is time for a broad public debate about the boundaries of acceptable speech, this time in a digital age, to be followed by tough legislation and sanctions. Those who make billions moving the news and commentary on the internet cannot be absolved of responsibility for the death of courageous young activist women like Heyer. Broadcasters and newspapers enjoy no such immunity. Why should Twitter?
It will be hard and divisive drawing a bright line between authoritarian censorship of free speech online and every democracy’s need to defend itself against incitement to racial hatred, violence and even genocide. This summer’s events make it clear that it is not a task about which we can any longer procrastinate.