On the 1st of December, Facebook Director of Governance and Global Affairs Brent Harris published a blog post announcing the first cases the newly constituted Oversight Board will consider. The announcement was a long time coming; it took Facebook two years to develop the Board, and since, both the company and the Board have been criticized for its slow progress…. […]
“We Must Save Democracy From Conspiracies,” insisted British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in a Time magazine article from Oct. 8, 2020. More specifically Baron Cohen accused Facebook of being “the greatest propaganda machine in history,” due to the platform’s failure to remove disinformation. Five days later, Baron Cohen complained on Twitter that Facebook had deleted […]
… Nel report, pubblicato dal think tank danese “Justitia” e intitolato non a caso “The Digital Berlin Wall”, i ricercatori Jacob Mchangama e Joelle Fiss hanno dimostrato come il NetzDG tedesco sia stato utilizzato come modello di riferimento per rafforzare e in alcuni casi “giustificare” la censura online in numerosi Paesi autoritari: negli ultimi due anni, Paesi come Venezuela, Vietnam, Russia, Bielorussia, Kenya, Singapore, Malesia, Filippine, Turchia, Mali, Cambogia e Pakistan hanno con più o […]
The point at which free speech ends and hate speech begins has become a burning issue in an age of social media, where billions of people have access to share synchronous content on global fora. This has raised concerns over an epidemic of hate speech, with privately owned platforms looking to human rights law for […]
The Scottish Government’s Hate Crime Bill flouts international human rights law and poses a “dire risk” to freedom of expression”, according to Danish legal experts. Justitia, an international judicial think tank based in Copenhagen, warns that draft ‘stirring up hatred’ offences in Part 2 of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill breach the […]
Inspired by Germany’s notorious hate-speech law, more countries seek to impose steep penalties on platforms that don’t comply with their censorship whims. “”This raises the question of whether Europe’s most influential democracy has contributed to the further erosion of global Internet freedom by developing and legitimizing a prototype of online censorship by proxy that can […]
On October 1, a new law to regulate content posted on social media platforms took effect in Turkey, The Guardian reported. Turkish journalists already face censorship and arrest because of social media posts, CPJ has found, and the law offers just one more tool to censor news. Yet the legislation was not solely conceived in Ankara; it follows the example of one of […]
Late in the evening on June 1, 2019, Walter Lübcke, a local German politician, sat on the terrace outside his house on the outskirts of Kassel when a man crept up on him, aimed a gun at his head and shot him just above his ear. The man, a neo-Nazi, had crossed paths with the […]
The German NetzDG law to counter illegal online speech has become a prototype for internet censorship in authoritarian states. The Commission’s proposal for the new Digital Services Act must avoid this template, write Jacob Mchangama and Natalie Alkiviadou. Jacob Mchangama is Director at the think-tank Justitia. Natalie Alkiviadou is Senior Research Fellow at The Future […]
Despite their opposing views, both US presidential candidates want to change how social media platforms operate. One system adopted by Germany is increasingly being discussed around the world as an option. The so-called NetzDG law has been emulated in countries including Turkey, Russia and Brazil with more than 20 other governments, including the UK, citing […]