Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet

Columbia Global Reports

by David Kaye

The author has produced a brief yet impactful work about the internet and efforts to control such expressions as hate speech and advocacy of terrorism. Kaye analyzes several examples of how online content producers are targeted for varied reasons, how platforms such as YouTube and Facebook have attempted to police forms of content on their servers, and how the culture of responsibility for Internet governance has shifted in the past last years. Kaye also covers fake news and the increased efforts by platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to root out these posts via automation--specifically AI. At the same time, Kaye brilliantly layers analysis of the politicization of content on platforms and the growth of efforts, mostly in Europe, to regulate these private, mostly American companies. All the while, Kaye makes sure readers are aware of the complexities and how free speech may be embattled if some of these regulations are put into effect at scale.

Genres: Politics, Technology, Nonfiction, Law, Audiobook, Internet, Social Science

142 pages, Paperback

First published June 3, 2019

Reviews

[David Wineberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Kaye is the United Nations special rapporteur for freedom of expression. He gets complaints from all over the world for the annoyances we all live with. Speech Police is his quick summary of the state of censorship, lack of effective self-regulation, and inconsistent and ineffective national regulation on internet postings.

Internet companies never tell you why your post was deleted, your account suspended or closed, what do about it, who to appeal to – or anything at all, usually. You never know if you were terminated by person or by software, or whether the software flagged you and a person clicked OK. (This is hardly restricted to speech. Apple terminates app sellers in its store without reason or recourse, and the same goes Amazon for any sort of vendor on its platform. Silicon Valley is justifiably renowned for its arrogance.)

Facebook deleted a section of the Declaration of Independence without a pre-removal warning or any information to the newspaper that posted it. It took an uproar in Congress for it to be restored. One person’s offensive language can be another’s founding documents.

Each internet firm has its own rules, its own definitions and its own vocabularies. Kaye gives the example of Twitter, which does not have a rule regarding hate speech, but instead has a paragraph on rules of conduct. In court cases, this can keep arguments going forever. At You Tube, it’s Community Guidelines. At Facebook, it’s Community Standards. Good luck understanding what you can and cannot do on each one. And then remembering the differences as you post to them, and where you are posting from.

There are no global laws, treaties, obligations or rules for these platforms to self-regulate by. So it’s all about the flavor of the month at each company. It was finally in 2018 that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged he wasn’t on top of it and that Facebook actually needed an overhaul, despite years of controversy and bad press.

The obvious question remains – why are we leaving it up to the companies to figure this out? Kaye quotes Marietje Shaake, a Dutch parliamentarian: “No one wants a Ministry of Truth, but I am also not reassured that Silicon Valley or Mark Zuckerberg are the de facto designers of our realities or our truths.”

But it’s not even that simple. Getting countries to agree is never easy. Some authoritarian leaders want no speech rights at all. Some religion-based nations have issues with any mentions of human bodies. And the degrees of freedom of speech vary widely. But as Kaye points out, just transparency in the rules would be a big step forward.

The book is an easy read, a superficial skim of the issue. It doesn’t go deep, and there is nothing new in it.

David Wineberg

[varsha :) · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

David Kaye’s book, Speech Police brushes the surface of online extremism and government regulation of social media platforms. He attempts to utilize a sufficiently global view of media platforms and does take into account individual countries' sovereignty to the best of his ability for a 145-page book. Ultimately though, his novel falls flat and presents a one-sided Americanized perspective of technology companies. Throughout the book, he runs around in circles with the ideas of universal global laws moderating online freedom of expression and democratizing platforms, though he does not exemplify a clear stance on any one topic. I wish Kaye had provided a more detailed outline of government moderation outside of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. He also fully disregards the economic pressures each company faces and the dependence of advertisers for media platforms. Overall, his ideas are not feasible, but he does bring to question if just moderation for western platforms is actually possible?

[Bill Leach · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his introduction, Kaye notes how the internet has changed over the last decade, the content in the form of individual blogs being replaced by social media. He notes that this has transformed it into something more like television with its centralization, sensationalism, insularity and inward-looking approach. The transition from a horizontal web to a vertical web has made it friendlier to manufactured amplification, censorship, disinformation and propaganda.

Kaye notes that the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights is important. Article 19 states "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." As the prohibition of content that incites hatred or discrimination is at the margin of the law, governments are not in a clear position to order removal of such material and so ask the platforms to do it instead.

The social media companies review the acceptability of material. Due to the tremendous volumes of content, much of this process is automated with manual review of possible violations of the platform's terms of service. Kaye looks more closely at how this process works, with examples from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The author feels these processes to be inadequate in that the rules for content removal are not clear, and if one is not happy with a removal decision, it is impossible to find anyone to talk to about it.

Kaye describes a hearing (July 2018) of the U.S. House Judicial Committee, seeming to belittle the testimony of the YouTube and Twitter representatives, and saying that he felt it fell short of an honest investigation, being focused on narrow partisan questions. He notes that the U.K. digital economy committee did a serious report in 2018, but surprisingly does not examine its findings. The U.S., Europe and India have laws that exempt platforms from liability for any content their users generate, and also for removing content.

In 2017, Germany proposed the NetzDG which specified specific penalties if platforms did not remove content that violated specific provisions of German law. Free speech proponents objected on that it could result in takedowns without public involvement, and the financial penalties would result in any marginal content being removed. In 2015, the European Commission created a code of conduct which seemed to restate what companies already did. It was criticized for a lack of an independent arbiter, leaving individuals subject to excessive takedowns, without remedy. The author looks at Singapore and Kenya which have laws penalizing those that distribute false information. These laws turn out to be more commonly used to protect the government and politicians, than to serve interests of the citizens. Europe has the Right To Be Forgotten (RTBF) whereby if content is felt to interfere with an individual's privacy, a request can be made to have the URL delinked from the search engines.

In the chapter "Arbiters of Truth" the author looks at disinformation, suggesting that the issues are knowing the impact of disinformation and what platform owners and government should do to police such content. He notes that botnets that amplify disinformation could be detected, that tools could make the source of information clearer, and that fact-checking organizations can assist in screening material. Kaye and two others issued a joint declaration on disinformation, the primary recommendation being that politicians should start telling the truth, which has surprisingly gone unheeded.

The author apparently misses the idea that information is often not inherently true or false, but often includes some degree of uncertainty and spin reflecting the position of the source of the information. Moreover, the acceptability is a function of how the content fits with the viewer's social values.

Kayes conclusions largely revolve around the idea that rules for speech should be made by "political communities", not private companies. He speaks of ideas such as decentralizing decision making, providing radically better transparency, and instituting industry wide oversight and accountability.

It is evident throughout the book that the author is unhappy with the content filtering done by the social media companies. While he acknowledges they have to make fine distinctions, he accuses them of a seat-of-the-pants approach to content filtering. He terms rule-oriented approaches as bureaucratic. The author is clearly uncomfortable with self-policing, but is also against regulation as it can easily lead to restrictions in free speech.

Overall, Kaye does a good job of showing that too much freedom leads to content unacceptable to many, while regulation can lead to interference with freedom of speech. Kayes solution mainly revolves around the establishment of a variety of councils and committees with greater public input.









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[Lauren D'Souza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last summer, I listened to an episode of the podcast Radiolab called “Post No Evil.” In it, Jad and Robert discuss the rules of what is and isn’t allowed on popular platforms, focusing on Facebook. Reading through the Facebook posting policy, it seems straightforward - just don’t post hateful and inappropriate stuff. But putting that into practice is a whole other beast, one with a gray area so large you can’t even see the black and white. As the hosts say, “How do you define hate speech? Where’s the line between a joke and an attack? How much butt is too much butt?” These are questions that Facebook’s highest experts have to grapple with, especially now that Facebook is a global platform serving as an online public forum - as David Kaye calls them, “stewards of public space.” Although Mark Zuckerberg probably never imagined that his website would one day serve as a breeding ground for fake news, hate speech, trolls, spam, pornography, and more - it’s certainly become that now.

Since then, content moderation on social media has become a hot-button issue, with John Oliver and Hasan Minhaj covering it on their shows, and various real-life content moderators (“the janitors of the internet”) writing exposés on the horrors of what they have to see in their day-to-day jobs.

As the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression for the United Nations, David Kaye is in a unique position to discuss this issue. He’s been invited to policy meetings and hearings with the big tech giants, he has worked on task forces concerning online hate speech, and his work stems from a global mandate to control hate speech while promoting freedom of expression. SPEECH POLICE is an interesting, thought-provoking read on these intersections, serving as both a primer for readers who are new to this topic, and an in-depth look at conversations that are typically private to seasoned readers.

Kaye covers a variety of issues, from the more popular topics of how Facebook contributed to ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar to the less known topic of undemocratic Internet Referral Units in Europe. He discusses how governments have and have not intertwined themselves with social media, what the legal and business obligations of platforms are to moderate content, how difficult it is to stamp out fake news, and how free speech plays into all of this.

If anything, Kaye makes you realize what a tough, tough job platforms have. “They have to make fine distinctions between the disturbing content that they all allow and the treats that they prohibit; between the insult that is kosher and the hate speech that is not; between legitimate journalism depicting horrors of the world and groups seeking to incite those horrors.” The lines in the sand are constantly moving, and it’s really hard to make policy that is consistent with these case-by-case decisions while still trying to make everyone happy.

In the end, Kaye puts forth two recommendations, one public and one private. But, in my opinion, this book is more informative than solutions-oriented. It really seeks to convey the complexity of the issue and how hard it is going to be to craft policy (both corporate and public policy) to adequately address online speech. He gives examples of laws like NetzDG in Germany that have tried to put sanctions on platforms for not addressing hate speech soon enough - and that’s in a country where hate speech (especially Nazi speech) is strictly illegal. I shook my head thinking about how ill-equipped our free-speech lauding and technologically-illiterate Congress is to work on a nuanced topic like this. But the threat of hate speech and fake news is as rampant as ever in the U.S., and we’re going to need some serious thought and action to prevent it from further infecting our society.

I can see this book likely being read as part of college courses on free speech and the Internet, but it’s a great read for anyone interested in the topic - which should be all of us.

Thank you to NetGalley and Columbia Global Reports for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear, concise guide to what is at stake in policing content online, especially that which appears in various social media platforms. In addition to differing attitudes around the world regarding the idea of "protected speech," Kaye makes it clear, in this even-handed report, that Mark Zuckerberg has been a significant hold-out on making significant changes to content moderation, since it has the potential to obtrude into profit making. (I suspect that Zuckerberg isn't yet willing to end his adoration of St Ayn Rand and the significant amorality of liberatarianism.) Ironically, Zuckerberg (with his libertarian delusions) and authoritarian rulers end up deliberately being the world's largest purveyors of false information.

[Carlisle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book brings up several interesting examples of content moderation challenges globally. But the book is relatively surface level and does not dive deep enough.

[Michael Erickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading "Near-Past" nonfiction is always an interesting exercise. Recent enough that I remember when what the book is talking about was news, far enough away that I can feel justified in feeling jaded that nothing has changed in the intervening years.

Everyone knows social media presents novel problems that didn't exist a generation ago, and no one really has a viable solution that makes everyone happy yet. On the "Companies should 100% self-regulate" end of the spectrum, we see problems as companies are unable or outright unwilling to moderate content on their platforms, either because they're not provided enough guidance on specifics from local governments (fair), or don't want to risk losing advertising income (boo). However in the "Governments should control social media platforms" camp... I mean, I don't feel like I have to explain the pitfalls of this approach, but the book does so anyway, highlighting specific cases in Iran and Kenya.

There are some interesting ideas bandied about in the Conclusions chapter including stuff I've never heard before. Multinational media corporations should have localized content moderation offices on country-by-country bases instead of a one-size-fits-all approach. Companies should identify "particularly vulnerable users based on status (e.g. race, religion, migrant, sexual orientation, gender, etc.) and develop programs aimed at protecting the space for their engagement on the platforms and to protect them from off-platform threats."(Not sure how I feel about that one, but it's a first for me.) Companies should publish regularly-scheduled transparency reports announcing which governments have requested what information on their users and how frequently. Governments should approach companies through independent (non-governmental, but also non-private) court systems for requests for information for counter-terrorism/national security threats.

I wish there was a better roadmap for how these changes could come about and how both multinational corporations and sovereign governments could be incentivized to adopt these proposals, but I appreciate that at least someone has put thought into how things could be better.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful primer. Contextualizes the changes in public and regulatory opinions about speech online by explaining the historical and political events that led to these changes.

[Angela Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Great insights on the challenges regarding regulating the internet.

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

good. mildly outdated since so much has happened on this front in the last few years, but a good foundation regardless. i appreciate a book that just lays out the issue without spending much time trying to sell me on a solution. absolutely helped inform me.

[فاروق · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a brief introduction to issues I’m sure most social media users are well aware of: the struggle to curb misinformation, hate speech, and targeted propaganda on social media platforms. This is a complex issue for a variety of reasons. Calls for increased corporate regulation paradoxically increase their power and influence, when it’s that same power that has been irresponsible and sometimes disinterested in handling this issue in the first place. Increased government regulation often leads to widespread suppression against dissidents and critics, like the Indian government asking Twitter to censor accounts that criticized their response to the Covid-19 surge in early May. And while social media is regularly abused by state and non-state actors, its value is undeniable as a vital tool for many to share stories that would otherwise be censured, like recent on-the-ground coverage of Israeli settler violence in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem. On top of all of this, hate speech is tremendously difficult to define, and machine-learning models that automate visual analysis of images that violate policies do not work as well on text, especially when deciphering between hate speech, sarcasm, and legitimate political debates.

The book lays out all of these issues, and very generally introduces the frameworks that companies and governments alike have tried to craft, from Facebook’s policy making meetings to Germany’s Network Enforcement Act, and the EU’s Internet Referral Unit. What’s interesting is that most of the government regulation has come from European countries (for both misinformation and data privacy), as the United States government has proven to be quite unserious about the issue. Just watch any congressional hearing about social media regulation and you’ll find lawmakers who don’t understand the complexity or severity of the issue, and use the time to talk about (perceived, and questionable) conservative censorship, or make cheap, quick points in an attempt to go viral on the very platforms they’re supposed to be regulating.

The basic premise of proposed solutions is that these platforms need to be more publicly accountable and transparent in their decision making, while governments need to be careful not to impose such strict regulations that would stifle free speech -- free speech itself as understood in a Western legal paradigm. Right now, some argue that the strong influence that companies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (Google) have amounts to a type of digital-colonialism, where foreign countries are all dominated by rules and decisions made from American companies that don’t understand the dynamics of many countries in which they operate, don’t invest in understanding them, and are often socially and politically disruptive. As such, another key part of solutions for social media regulation will be to decentralize decision making away from the western headquarters of these companies, and instead make sure that each region or country has local offices that can act independently in their regulation efforts to ensure that local nuances are being accounted for.

I think all of this makes sense, but to treat misinformation and political upheaval as an isolated issue away from the other social and political issues facing people will not be very successful. Social media now amplifies, creates, and reflects the social conditions of people. The stuff that happens online now very much affects the real world, instead of the real world just being reflected in our online lives. As such, improving the political and material conditions of a people is still paramount to healthy online and offline lives, on top of cleaning the social media ecosystem.

This book was very brief (as Columbia Global Reports are designed to be), so it didn’t go into any case studies, scrutinize policy making, or offer anything more than frameworks for how to think about solutions. It’s a good book to synthesize and describe the current challenges in regulating the online space, but if you’ve been following these issues already, I don’t think you’ll learn much from this book.

[Laura Haske · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm doing some serious First Amendment reading in advance of a political science conference panel where I will be sitting as the First Amendment legal perspective on free speech. Yikes! I couldn't have picked a more interesting book to help me prepare. This was written by David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression from 2014 - 2020.

The book walks through current restrictions on internet speech globally. It was fascinating. Growing up in the US and studying law in the US, without a good comparative law perspective, has made me take our free speech protections for granted. This book reminded me that there are a lot of challenges associated with speech and the internet.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I don’t see eye to eye with the author and some of his peers the book’s been quite good in terms of what governments are trying to do to police speech and behavior on the internet.
A premise which is flawed and should not happen. Yes, you should have a modicum of common sense when posting something online but at the same time you should be free to vent and say whatever you want without fear of going to jail - if it were up to some politicians that’s what it would happen.

Overall, freedom of speech should count more than feelings, no matter what and especially if it’s offensive.
The part where I agree is having certain issues monitored for acts of terrorism in order to safeguard people across the world.
3/5 mainly because it brought me up to speed on some things that politicians are doing in order to censor us online and stifle our freedoms.

[Ilya Ilyich Oblomov · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Kaye has changed my mind. Kind of.

Kind of, I say, because before reading this book, I held the sort of amorphous opinion on social media companies' role in policing content that I think many well-meaning people do. "They should do something, right? That sangfroid son-of-a-Zuckerberg is cashing in while the internet's overrun by fake news hucksters" And now I'm not so sure of that opinion.

As David Kaye points out, putting the regulatory burden of action on social media companies just isn't so simple.

Should we choose to do so, overworked and underpaid content moderators suddenly become the gatekeepers of what's okay to say and what's not. And given that social media companies will generally want to avoid friction with governments, said content moderators will be incentivized to operate with a sledgehammer, rather than a scalpel. Plus, Kaye notes, governments may not be the best judge of what belongs on the internet. In America, Donald Trump probably doesn't think his critics' tweets do. In Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta doesn't think the posts of opposition bloggers do. In Myanmar, one-time peacenik Aang Saun Suu Kyi doesn't think video recordings of government genocide do.

And even if all governments were well-intentioned, allowing a regulatory environment in which whispers from the feds could influence social media content moderation would amount to giving the government new powers sans legal process. If we agree governments shouldn't exercise prior restraint on certain topics, then it likely follows that they shouldn't be able to do the same while hiding behind a middleman.

So, if we're not okay with social media companies playing speech jury and executioner, how do we solve the problems of social media chicanery? Fake news and threatening content won't leave the platforms just because governments decide to get constitutionally circumspect. Unfortunately, it's here that Kaye begins to falter.

He suggests social media companies to tamp down the virality of bad content. That obviates the prior restraint issue (Facebook now says "You can shout down the well, but you can't use our super-megaphone "), but it still forces social media companies to play jury on what's bad.

Kaye also suggests that social media companies could take a decentralized approach to figuring out what's "bad", partnering with independent bodies in countries to form local speech guidelines. Recognizing the difficulty of that solution, Kaye adds that some of those bodies might need to reside out-of-state for their own safety. But something just doesn't sound right about out-of-state bodies deciding what in-state people get to say. Plus, who gets to pick the composition of these bodies? "The people"? What if the people don't like a minority? What if a minority (pick a reactionary religious sect) is represented and they don't like the people? Answer unclear.

Wrap-up: this book does a nice job illuminating the concrete consequences of asking social media companies to regulate content. The solutions it proposes are awkward and loose (as is the book's prose), but I'd still recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.

[Fornyx · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought that this was a pretty good introduction into the field of content moderation, though it does not delve into too much detail. I liked that Kaye drew on case studies/examples from all around the world including Myanmar, Singapore, Kenya, and Germany which threw up many interesting issues illustrating the numerous conflicting principles and values. Determining what is permissible and what is not is definitely a very difficult challenge for Big Tech.

It was interesting to learn more about the US approach (in favour of free speech) vs the EU approach (more state regulation). It also made me wonder about the Asian approach. Most developing countries just have not got up to speed on tech policy or social media regulation yet, and many of these countries also tend to be a little stricter with media freedoms. So it would have been good if the book delved more into the Asian perspective given the lack of much regulatory frameworks.

The overarching theme of government vs corporate was also very interesting to me. It helped clarify certain opinions that I used to have, and helped me form a more nuanced view on who should bear the burden of content moderation. I walked away with a better broad understanding of this complex issue. I like that Kaye provided a recommended reading list at the end of his book, and I'll be sure to check out one of those he recommended on the role of AI.

[Min · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a quick overview on the issues we face today governing speech on social media platforms. The proliferation of American social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have led to the rise of a new type of "government" - it's interesting to see what kinds of issues have arisen with respect to the regulation of online speech and human rights on a global scale.

For how short this audiobook was, I appreciated the breadth of issues covered and the concise manner in which they were presented. The author does not claim to have found the cure-all to all these challenges to policing speech, but he certainly raised a variety of important questions and factors for consideration.

Coming from a place of being someone with legal training, I was admittedly a tad bit uncomfortable with Kaye's suggestion of relying on more creative forms of regulation and governance. It's almost a reflex of mine to dismiss extralegal measures and soft law as being merely perfunctory. Nevertheless, by the very end of the book, I was more convinced that the approach to seeking to balance freedom of expression and protection against harmful speech has to be a multi-pronged one integrating both traditional and non-traditional stakeholders.

This is my first time listening to a work of this author - I would definitely be looking up more of them.

[Brett Dunst · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book examines the causes for the rise in online extremism and correctly lays blame squarely at the feet of social networks and their revenue-maximizing algorithms.

It's a bit of a deep dive into what happens at the intersection of user-generated content and conflicting international law.

Unfortunately this book takes a slightly myopic view of the problem, choosing to focus its analysis primarily on the actions and policies of the big social networks while completely ignoring the challenges faced by other online providers involved in the delivery of user-generated content - namely domain registrars, web hosts, CDNs, certificate authorities, ISPs...

These parties are content-neutral by nature. They are the antithesis of algorithm-driven social media platforms that juggle user content in front of eyeballs for maximum engagement at the risk of spreading harmful ideas. Indeed, the author doesn't even acknowledge the existence of an online content delivery chain, and that's a big failing.

There is more to the internet than social media.

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Regulation of free speech is very tricky. Especially online, where not governments but big American corporations are in charge. Who gets to decide what online content is acceptable? Do the same rules apply everywhere?

Kaye was the "UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression". While the general attention is on all the harm unregulated social media posts have caused in the last decade (hate speech, radicalization, misinformation) Kaye rightfully reminds us that too much regulation can be a slippery slope. Especially if executed by governments that are currently in the grey-zone between authoritarian and democratic governments.

He argues that human rights law should be the basis for content moderation norms, he wants more transparency from the social media companies on their algorithms and decisions, and advocates the need for independent local public oversight institutions that are neither part of the social companies nor the governments.

[Carla Doria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Working as a content moderator, this book was excellent for me. But nonetheless, I can still imagine myself reading it even if my job had nothing to do with this field.

David Kaye presents us with the implications of social media platforms and other platforms in the context of free speech in today's world. Kaye does a great job presenting the facts, but also illustrating with specific examples, the influence of big tech companies on the political situations of many countries and economies. He presents not only the viewpoint from policy and other government entities but he's also done a great job researching the implications for tech companies when having to comply with government requirements.

It is very hard to summarize this little book in this review but I can totally recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about this subject, any employee at a tech company, or anybody wanting to know the situation between free speech, government regulation, and the future of content moderation on the internet.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not easy to write a comprehensive review of a subject as complicated, multi-national and controversial as free speech on the internet. Throw in the on-going issue of hate speech on Twitter and the accusations levelled at Facebook that they have influenced elections and referendums on behalf of foreign powers then it becomes a Herculean task.

Kaye has approached this potential minefield and produced a book that examines these issues, and others, while suggesting ways of approaching regulation that might be acceptable.

If nothing else this book deserves praise for taking a global view on these issues rather than a narrow parochial one.

Recommended if you want to understand these issues from a global perspective.

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating short book on how to regulate internet platforms to assure human rights worldwide. Kaye does a great job talking about the responsibilities of governments and tech platforms in protecting the rights of their users as well as dissidents abroad. The CEOs of these tech platforms know tech and codes, but their massive reach and power makes them central global connectors and they need to take some responsibility in making sure they are not running over these important rights. That is to say, governments need to make sure they are complying with them. This is a must-read for anyone in tech policy.

[Zaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally decent analysis of the difficulties/problem though probably gives tech companies too much credit for their good intentions and government too little credit for it's capacity to regulate, but ultimately this book/essay's solutions are limited in scope, unlikely to work, and allow and deeply flawed status quo to mostly stay in place; it'll be shame if this is one of the primary references silicon valley turns to when considering policing speech and even more of a shame if government officials do.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short books can be 5 stars, also. What makes this book exceptional is its global perspective. It has concrete examples, and it elucidates and analyzes them all adeptly. It faces the issues squarely and at the end leaves us with some critical avenues of action. A great little book and a good place to start for literally anyone concerned about where the web is going, especially Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

UN rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression David Kaye takes a wider perspective on internet speech than what we are accustomed to in the US. Election interference is not restricted to Russia and US elections. It is commonplace in Europe, Africa and Asia. Kaye discusses possible legislative and corporate responses within the legal traditions of varied nations as well as the necessity of greater reader awareness of the value of their sources. Footnotes and additional resources.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Identifies and outlines free speech and content moderation dilemmas that challenge the democratic potential of social media. There are no easy fixes, but Kaye demonstrates how the application of human rights law should guide discussions about how to best govern the platformization of the public forum in ways that are proportionate and necessary.

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear overview by the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression of current issues in free speech online. He focuses on social media, especially hate speech and fake news, as well as the challenge of content moderation.

[Hadar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good primer on the challenges of social media content moderation

This is a tough space without clear answers. The book does a good job of providing historical context and laying out existing arguments around how to handle content moderation.

[Ken Rogerson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice overview. Learned a lot about global attempts to regulate speech online. The final chapter is inspirational but feels a bit naive. In my admittedly naive opinion, big tech will only do the minimum to keep regulators off their backs and public opinion leaning not too negative.

[Lilly Benny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kaye presents a ton of evidence and anecdotes, but doesn't really dive deep into internet censorship and moderation. He keeps himself pretty neutral throughout the book, which I found annoying cause the whole book is about people sharing their opinions :/

[Cristie Underwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's painstaking research and attention to detail is obvious in the writing of this book. There were many facts that I only discovered after reading this!