The internet and the world wide web have lowered the barriers to broadcast communication to nearly zero. In the past, you had to have a broadcast licence and a lot of money to run a television station, a radio station, a newspaper or a magazine-publishing operation that would reach a large audience. Today, you only need a smartphone and an account on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook or a similar social medium.
The empowerment of individuals has been nothing short of exhilarating - but now we are starting to see the consequences. Freedom to speak has never been more available, but in the resulting babel, truth is obscured by manufactured falsehoods, misrepresentations, fake news, alternative facts and a medley of other phenomena. In 2018 we will see a significant reaction to these side-effects and will grasp the nettle of how to balance free speech with an open internet.
The web's powerful enabling capacity has introduced a range of social disruptions that some countries regard as harmful. There is pressure on the providers of the enabling platforms to filter some of the content, either in accordance with user wishes, for business reasons or because laws are enacted that require redaction.
Already there is the European Right to be Forgotten policy that imposes redaction requirements on search engines. For business reasons, some content is being demonetised (ie no ads are shown in connection with the content). There are frequent demands from many - both companies and individuals - that hate speech be filtered or de-prioritised.
In the US, freedom of speech is of primary importance in our Bill of Rights. It is expected that speech you don't like must still be permitted. Nonetheless, it is becoming apparent that not all platforms are going to be required to permit all speech. Just the opposite. The hard question is where to draw lines. At what point does filtering become harmful censorship? Different societies and cultures may draw lines in different places. On the global internet, how will these differences be reconciled?
The internet has become a mirror of our global societies. Fifty-one per cent of the world's population is estimated to have access to it, many of them by way of smartphones. Some people are not happy with what they see in this mirror, but make the mistake of thinking that correcting the mirror will fix the problems reflected therein. If the trend towards filtering internet content persists and grows, it seems likely that the content filtered out will simply move underground to the dark web. For some observers, this seems a good outcome. However, transparency is an important element in assessing the health of society. If we cannot see the cancers on the body politic we may fail to recognise the need for a remedial response. The importance of the freedom of the press has often been invoked precisely for this reason. In our zeal to filter speech we don't like or agree with, we may obscure serious societal problems that deserve, if not demand, our attention.
So here is the conundrum for our increasingly connected world: how do we stay aware of what is going on in the world and in the minds of its citizens while seeking to limit the pernicious consequences of unbridled freedom to spew hatred, falsehoods and society-damaging ideologies? How do we instil a capacity for critical thinking in our citizens so they can winnow wheat from chaff? Is critical thinking sufficient defence against the digital acid rain that threatens to poison the ocean of useful online information? These are the questions that should be at the front of our minds in 2018.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
