The Guardian (USA)

The Guardian’s view on free speech online: a messy compromise

- Editorial

Alphabet, the company that owns Google and YouTube, has quietly become one of the most powerful gatekeeper­s of permitted speech on the planet, along with Facebook and – within China – the Chinese government. This isn’t entirely a bad thing. Everyone agrees there are some things that have no place online, although different cultures and different countries have varying and often entirely incompatib­le rules about permissibl­e speech. But an entirely uncensored internet would be a disaster for society, as everyone now acknowledg­es. Government­s want their rules enforced, and the advertisin­g businesses that have become the giants of social media are the players who can enforce them. If Google, Facebook, and Twitter all decide to ban a person their public profile will be extinguish­ed and they will, in effect, disappear. Such a person may still exist on the internet, but only on the margins.

There is a halfway house between complete extinction and freedom: YouTube can choose, as a private company, not to show any advertisem­ents against a particular channel, and even to keep for itself the donations some people make to see their comments prominentl­y featured below a video. These sanctions were last week imposed on Carl Benjamin, the Ukip candidate for MEP, who has repeatedly discussed raping the Labour MP Jess Phillips; it is right that he should not be able to profit from such disgusting misogyny.

Such advertisin­g bans, known as demonetisa­tions, can be financiall­y disastrous. The stars of social media can make thousands of pounds a month from their performanc­es even when they are not at the very top, where real fortunes are made. This must itself tend to drive more extreme and attention-grabbing stunts, just as the companies’ notorious recommenda­tion algorithms do. After all, no one is forced to watch YouTube: we go there for entertainm­ent.

The cleverness of the alt-right movement has been to adopt the techniques of the entertainm­ent industry into selling opinions in the same way that personalit­ies are used to sell anything else on social media. They turn extremism into a community soap opera. This isn’t a matter of slick production. Just as television pioneered the idea of news and opinions delivered by a friendly presence in the family living room, social media, on

 ??  ?? ‘If Google, Facebook and Twitter all decide to ban a person their public profile will be extinguish­ed and they will, in effect, disappear.’ Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters
‘If Google, Facebook and Twitter all decide to ban a person their public profile will be extinguish­ed and they will, in effect, disappear.’ Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

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