Reddit: Free Speech vs Censorship

(graphic courtesy pngitem / Brijesh Birus)

Timing is everything, and today was one of those days where there was a confluence of information I want to blog about.  After a 2-week deep dive into Reddit and Instagram use, I saw a Bloomberg article published today about racism in posts within the Reddit community, and the difficulty to prevent it.  Reports of racism, and promises to fix it by Reddit, including co-founder Alexis Ohanian, have been known since 2014 when moderators of the sub-Reddit r/blackladies wrote an open letter about racism within their community to Reddit. 

 

The moderators of  r/blackladies provided a slew of racist comments to a Reddit administrator who admitted that "idiotic trolls" often comment to sub-Reddits.  Difficulties in moderating free speech is exemplified by the trial run by Reddit earlier this year of chat rooms that did not have moderators.  After complaints of harassment within the rooms, they were shut down.   

After the George Floyd killing, moderators of over 800 sub-Reddits, published an open letter barely a week ago to the Reddit board demanding they stand up to hate speech and support of black lives on their platform.  Ohanian decided to resign around the same time, and asked the board to appoint a Black board member to fill his post, which they did. 

To further underscore the importance, scope and magnitude of the fight against hate speech and racism today, just hours ago, Facebook removed 88 Trump ads on its platform for use of a red triangle symbol used by the Nazis to identify dissidents.  And while most hate speech is easily identifiable, can this new push of censorship take on political wings because of the power and influence it affords?  

This post is not about politics.  It is about the difficulty combating words, and symbols, of hate speech and racism within Web 2.0 while maintaining free speech.  While Facebook and Twitter have been at the center of the national debate on hate speech, Reddit has been somewhat under the radar. From the beginning, Ohanian said Reddit was a "bastion of free speech" where users could vote comments up or down in a discussion thread, very much like listeners of an orator at the Speaker's Corner in London who could loudly and freely cheer in approval of what someone said, or raucously shout the jerk down if they disagreed.  But several years later, Steve Huffman, also a Reddit co-founder, clarified that Reddit was designed to be a place where "open and honest discussion can happen."   But now, platform owners are pulling the reins tighter now.

Just two days ago, Google booted the Federalist from its ad platform for publishing content that allegedly violated its hate policy, but then clarified that it was the comments that were posted that they deemed in violation, not the published material. The question then arises: who is responsible for the comments?  The owner of the platform that provides the arena for discussion (Google) or the entity that posted the content being replied to (Federalist)?   In retaliation for Google's action, the U.S. Senate yesterday introduced a bill to soften the legal protections tech platforms have if they unfairly suppress content on their platforms, which would make it easier for them to be sued.  

More and more, its seems like free speech will be decided by the courts which means it is an evolving window.  There have already been lawsuits where government officials have blocked Twitter users who criticized them or their policies, only to be sued for violation of the First Amendment.   And social media giants are being pressured by the EU to better monitor hate speech and remove it quickly.  Evelyn Aswad, a University of Oklahoma law professor said “American social media giants have chosen to move away from their initial First Amendment inclinations for a variety of reasons, including pressure from European authorities as well as advertisers and others to ‘clean up’ their platforms.”

And as algorithm use is increased and tweaked to identify and delete hate speech which is crucial to civil discourse, will such work be reconfigured to influence information dissemination such as in the upcoming presidential election?   Because free speech is an individual's opinion which is influenced by what a person believes and knows.  If algorithms skew the information you receive, then theoretically it can skew your knowledge...and opinion.  As pointed out earlier, it seems freedom of speech versus censorship will be decided either by legislation, or in the courts.  Either way, the most important thing is to keep social media open for civil discourse with a wide diversity of ideas, and respect for others' opinions.