Tuesday 25 November 2008

More on the internet and freedom of speech


I was lying on my parents' sofa hungover one sunday watching the Hollyoaks omnibus when my 12-year-old brother entered the room in floods of tears. As I comforted him, he managed to tell me between sobs that something on the computer had upset him. I stomped over to the machine, ready to confront any pubescent cyber-bullies tormenting him on Bebo, and found instead the end of a YouTube video. Clicking 'play again', I felt nausea creep through my stomach as a baying crowd loaded on the screen and it became clear what was showing. It was a video of Saddamn Hussein's execution.

Ok, so recorded deaths may be pretty extreme in terms of what the average user posts to the net, but the fact that a site owned by the most powerful internet company in the world can't even control and moderate all its content just shows what a wild beast the internet is to tame. Defamatory claims are posted to message boards, pictures are shared without copyright and gory videos such as these make their way in to the hands of 12-year-olds. Just recently, the identities of Baby P's killers spread across facebook like wildfire and the BNP's membership list was not so much leaked as flooded across forums and blogs.

Shane Richmond, The Telegraph's communities editor, suggested to us that instead of fighting a losing battle we may have to just accept that we can never control the internet's content. He argued that many of our laws, such as defamation as contempt are court, are unenforceable in the online world and should be modified to reflect this.

Furthermore, users come to the internet because they want and expect freedom of speech, so who are we to deny this? We as journalists are paid to provide them with what they want. Now the greater choice available to them means we must work even harder to win their loyalty - and if a community where they can say and post what they wish is the way to do this, then so be it.

I've blogged on the complexities of free speech and the internet before, and have been unconvinced that minimal moderation is the best thing for users. Harmful, offensive and violent material aside, how can we ensure that users are not left swimming in an ocean of user-generated sewage, hunting for that illusive golden nugget of information they actually need? But if we waltz around social media culling anything not up-to-scratch, would we just become intellectual nazis, denying those without an educated or articulate voice the right to express themselves?

It's too early to tell whether either of these somewhat-apocalyptic visions will materialise in the future. But as it becomes ever clearer that the days when the user's voice remain silent are never coming back, the more we can be sure that this tight-rope line between moderation, protection and freedom of expression is one we shall be struggling to walk our whole careers.

(photo by gawd, shared under a creative commons license)

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