Op-eds etc.
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 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 […]
In this piece by Raghav Mendiratta he looks into Twitter’s anticipatory Takedown of Tweets in India. On July 25, Twitter ‘withheld’ or disabled access to two tweets made by activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan. Prashant Bhushan had posted two tweets in the end of June, criticizing the Supreme Court and especially its current Chief Justice. Based on the […]
In this latest article for Rights!, Jacob Mchangama and Natalie Alkiviadou of Justitia provide a timely socio-legal commentary on Scotland’s controversial new Hate Crime Bill. The authors detail how vagueness of language and some alarming characteristics of this proposed bill are of serious concern to free speech and run contrary to existing standards under International Human Rights […]
Natalie Alkiviadou and Jacob Mchangama in Verfassungblog.de: There are also good reasons to believe that the current ‘censorship pandemic’ violates international human rights standards. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights has stressed that while COVID-related disinformation must be combatted, some governments are ‘using this imperative as a pretext to introduce disproportionate restrictions to press freedom; this […]
Scotland’s Hate Crime Bill is well-intentioned. But history shows us that censorship is no way to fight hate. ‘Nothing is more apt to surprise a foreigner than the extreme liberty which we enjoy in this country of communicating whatever we please to the public…’ Thus wrote Scottish philosopher David Hume in 1742, extolling free speech as ‘the […]
Coronavirus Has Started a Censorship Pandemic Governments around the world are banning fake news about the crisis—and cracking down on their critics while they’re at it. So writes, Future of Free Speech’s Jacob Mchangama and FIRE’s Sarah McLaughlin in Foreign Policy
In the face of relentless pressure from China, Taiwan may have figured out how to combat disinformation without undermining free speech. Read the full piece at The American Interest.
Politicians and opinion-makers around the world often assume that there is a trade-off between civil rights and national safety, although the association is theoretically ambiguous. Different theoretical arguments support both a positive and negative association between freedom of expression and terrorism: Some hold that restricting the freedom of expression will hinder the coordination of terrorist […]