Arguments against online safety interventions are often expressed as being in protection of free speech rights. But there is a way to implement safety interventions that are effective at reducing harm – and protective of everybody’s rights.
In this article we look at what a rights-based approach to online safety means, and what types of safety interventions could unite free speech and online safety advocates.
Freedom to what?
The UN Declaration of Human Rights, and most of the legislation that enshrines those rights include many rights and freedoms. There are protections for life, liberty, security, privacy, and access to education for example.
For the purpose of this article, we’ll focus on the right to free speech (Freedom of Expression) – but the approaches we recommend can be used to protect all rights and freedoms.
Article 19 of the United Nations declaration on Human Rights 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.”
Freedom to be… free
The good news is that by default – the internet enables freedom. More than ever before and thanks in a big part to information technology we can be free. Free to be who we want to be, to express ourselves, to access education, and to explore the world. And clearly – the internet provides many opportunities to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas” and wherever possible, we should allow it to do that.
For everyone, and only limited where necessary
There are two important foundation concepts in the declaration on Human Rights that are often conveniently overlooked by people arguing to either advance or block online safety initiatives in the name of human rights.
The first two articles state that all human beings are equal and entitled to rights and freedoms “without distinction of any kind”. The closing two articles (29 & 30) set broad restrictions justifying the reduction of a persons rights to protect other people’s rights.
Those limitations are to protect morality, public order, general welfare and to protect the rights of others. In summary, everybody is entitled to rights and freedoms that should only be limited to ensure everybody can access their rights and freedoms.
Competing or balancing?
Online safety advocates have created interventions to protect the rights of vulnerable and marginalised to participate online. They’ve argued that free speech has been used to justify intimidation and to silence vulnerable people and communities.
Free speech advocates counter argue that in the process of protecting the rights of those communities – the impact has been to reduce everybody else’s rights to freedom of expression.
There is truth in both statements – and a rights based approach recognises that rights do compete and do need to be balanced. Therefore, free speech absolutists (and for that matter online safety absolutists) cannot claim to be taking a rights based approach.
Simple in theory
Using a rights based approach to online safety is simple in theory. If certain participants are stopping others from contributing or causing harm, the right thing to do is to remove them (or their ability to cause harm). This is true even if those actions are within their rights. Intervention is justified by a disproportionate impact on the rights and freedoms of others.
Equally – if that same behaviour is not causing harm or reducing other people’s rights, then removing them is not justified.
Complex in practice
Online platforms transacting millions of pieces of content have to find ways to implement safety at scale. The cheapest way to do that is to set blanket rules banning and removing anything that might cause harm – regardless of whether it does or not.
System wide (at a platform or country level) restrictions are more cost effective and a legitimate response from private technology companies, but they invariably boil down to binary decisions about whether to allow some harm to occur or to reduce freedom of expression.
A rights based approach requires the restriction of a persons rights only when the exercise of those rights is harming others. This can only be ascertained within the specifics of each online exchange and dispute. And that brings us to five of the most frightening words for accountants everywhere…
A case by case basis
The way to make these decisions with the absolute minimal impact on rights and freedoms is on a case by case basis.
By analysing and then only removing the content (or user) that is causing harm when it is causing harm, the overall settings for freedom of expression do not have to be reset. The impact on free expression can be restricted to individual online exchanges or pieces of content – and justified under a rights based approach.
Case by case approaches enable proportionate responses. A person who has content removed because it harmed another person has not had their right to expression permanently removed – and it does not require rights to be constrained systemwide. That person is still free to hold that opinion without interference and to seek, receive and impart information about it. They have simply had an instance of that expression removed because it was unreasonably impinging on the rights of others.
A safety approach free speech advocates can embrace
The best way to make decisions on a case by case basis is through human moderation teams within tech companies, and through helplines that act as brokers and trusted flaggers.
Helplines and human moderators can also provide additional support and services that ensure a better experience for victims of online harm, and strengthen their value from an economic perspective – but that’s an article for another day.
Moderators and helplines can advance safety outcomes with the minimal impact on freedom of expression. They represent a more complicated and more costly approach – but are the best way to ensure the balancing of the rights of users on both sides of a dispute. In practice, costs and complexity can be mitigated through systemwide settings and utilising technology tools to set the parameters that trigger action and interventions by those human moderators and helpdesks.
Tech companies and governments will naturally lean more towards the costs effective systemic solutions. Online safety and free speech advocates should unite to push them towards the more flexible and effective solutions.
[…] online safety discussions dissolve into unreconcilable debates about finding the right balance of freedom of expression against harm reduction. These debates invariably revolve around treatment of “awful but lawful” content – and […]