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A review by laurenkd89
Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet by David Kaye
3.0
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.
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.