A Change in Freedom
Freedom of speech remains one of the core ideals upheld in a democratic society, the one to end all else. With the development of the digital age, it is becoming progressively harder to trace the changes in concepts of freedom of speech, and the ways that this freedom is being challenged in new ways.
Democratic culture is intrinsically connected to the ability of people to take part in the, “production and distribution of culture” (Balkin, 2017), an ability granted only by a freedom of expression, a freedom to, “have a say in the forces that shape the world we live in and make us who we are” (Balkin, 2017) with no interference from a more powerful counterpart. This culture breeds fair opportunity and self-governance, but has been and continues to be tainted by the possibilities it grants to propagate and allow hate speech. One prime example of this is the construction of a culture that holds abusers responsible for their actions, as is the case with the #MeToo movement, a movement that started in the digital sphere and had real-life consequences on the power dynamics of (truthfully, only certain) society.
The digital sphere, even more so than traditional cultural spheres, heightens the struggle between these benefits and risks of modern democracy. This is directly related to the capitalist nature of the digital sphere, which is, arguably, a more intense tool that allows for demerits to overtake the benefits of freedom of speech, as technological and algorithmic designs, “subordinate[s] freedom of expression to the protection and defense of capital accumulation in the information economy” (Balkin, 2017). Private parties with economic and political power become the be all end all editors of the digital age, as they, “use artificial intelligence to control us and to manipulate us in novel, sometimes hidden, subtle and unexpected ways” (Tufekci, 2017), be it through the commodification of personal information or the power to amplify their voices in what is meant to be an equal democracy, a power that is aided by an algorithm that seeks to engulf its users — rather, it’s products, in more and more consumerism of its services, collecting more and more information.
The digital age presents itself as the true equaliser, presenting the same opportunity for all to participate in and shape culture, but covert algorithmic control for economic ends leads to the production of a much more sinister (and, to a certain degree, unregulated) age that commodifies participants in a presumed democratic culture. We find ourselves bombarded with advertisements that are targeted towards our specific interests, the result of the commodification of our data, leading to an amplified voice of the economically powerful over all others, as was the case with the Trump administration’s use of “dark posts”, secretly manufactured and extremely specifically targeted posts that literally diminished people’s participation in one of the tenants of democracy, voting in the midterm elections.
Conventional media’s module of one-to-many broadcast presented unique opportunities for control by people holding positions of power in the media scape, be it the promotion of their own views or agendas. Moreover, one must address the reduction of quality of communication in the drive for ratings and, consequently, economic gain. However, conventional media laws played a role in limiting these disadvantages and in creating a public understanding of a balanced freedom of speech, be it through their attention to public interest obligations in the choice of content and the unbiased angle through which it is covered, or social responsibility initiatives. These laws prevented media concentration and ensured a place for diverse and equal voices to be heard.
With digital media, however, a new problem presents itself. Laws are no longer are the regulator of power dynamics, but rather algorithmic choices by digital media companies themselves and community policies. This challenges the very core of the democratic culture promised by the digital age, an age that was supposed to give equal footing to all, through granting power to unknown algorithms that place the benefit of digital media companies above those of the user, and through policies that are relative and open to interpretation, with no real interpretive human force behind decisions made to uphold these policies, but rather backed by the same algorithm that benefits the medium itself.
“ To protect free speech in the digital age, lawyers have to become cyberlawyers, not simply lawyers who study cyberlaw, but lawyers who think about how technology can best be structured and how public policies can best be achieved through wise technological design.” (Balkin, 2017)
To address these new harms, changes must happen on several terrains. Firstly, there is an inherent need for an ever-changing legal force that matches the fast paced changes in digital media, a legal force that is not reactive to problems as they happen, but is rather preventative in the power granted to these media. One example could be to update the license granting laws of traditional media to fit the digital age, with licenses needing to be issued for social media platforms to be able to operate, licenses that can pay close attention to loosely defined “community policies”, if nothing else. This, of course, remains hard with the hardship of definitions of freedom of speech and its limitations in the non-digital sphere, but with such an initiative, the challenges will at least match those of the traditional age rather than surpass them.
Governments’ roles are to protect their people, and it is on governments to prevent our data from being put up, “for sale to the highest-bidding authoritarian or demagogue” (Tufekci, 2017), as our data becomes a tool in the algorithmic powers at play.
However, the question that begs an answer is how national governments are meant to regulate an international and boundless medium, a medium that transcends geographical bounds. And to that, one suggestion is the establishment of a universal court of sorts that releases decrees based not on possibly fascist rules of the land, but on universal understandings of democracy and, ultimately, freedom of speech.
References
(2017, September). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. Retreived from https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads
Balkin, J. M. (2017). Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society. Popular Culture and Law, doi:10.4324/9781315089645–14
