13 Oct 2023 | Israel, News and features, Palestine
The events of the last week have been horrific. We won’t rehash them here — the videos, photos and details coming out of the Middle East are everywhere you look. For an organisation that campaigns for free speech, we have struggled to find words to respond to the mounting loss of life and the horrendous accounts that emerge every day. But at Index our job is not to report on all of this. Instead our job is to uphold free expression, and to alert the world to the instances where this has been curtailed. So that’s what we’ll do. Here are the free speech issues we are most concerned about:
Killed and missing journalists
Amid the deaths of civilians, journalists are losing their lives. While there’s nothing to suggest that the journalists are being specifically targeted, their lack of protection is of huge concern, both for them and for the knock-on effect for media freedom more broadly. The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported that at least 10 journalists have been killed so far. The first was Yaniv Zohar, an Israeli photographer working for the Israeli Hebrew-language daily newspaper Israel Hayom, who was killed alongside his wife and two daughters during the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Nahal Oz in southern Israel on 7 October. Israel Hayom’s editor-in-chief has said that Yaniv was working that day. Nine Palestinian journalists have also been confirmed dead as of yesterday and one Israeli journalist is reported missing.
Protest bans
Across the world, buildings are being lit up with blue and white, while green, white, black and red flags are being held aloft in protest. While these vigils and protests are being enacted, so too are calls to shut them down. In the UK, home secretary Suella Braverman suggested waving Palestinian flags might be a criminal act (depending on the context) and told police chiefs to be on “alert and ready to respond to any potential offences”. In France, the interior minister yesterday announced a systematic ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Police have also warned against pro-Palestine rallies in Sydney, after some people chanted antisemitic slogans at a previous demonstration. The Sydney event organisers have distanced themselves from those people and said: “This behaviour has no place at these rallies.” Meanwhile, police in Sydney placed restrictions on Jewish people by warning them to stay at home while that first rally went ahead, and even arrested a man who was carrying an Israeli flag for “breach of the peace”.
There are certain areas that fall into “grey free speech” areas. Protest is usually not one of them. Only sometimes it is. The office was divided, for example, on whether there should be restrictions on protest outside abortion clinics. Today we are similarly divided. The Times argues here that some protests are making the leap from a peaceful right to expression to hate crimes. The Daily Beast argues the opposite and that these bans would erode our free speech rights.
Internet interruptions
This week we’ve heard reports of social media accounts being suspended or blocked. NetBlocks, a former Index award-winner which maps media freedom, has also reported on declining internet connectivity in areas of both Israel and Palestine, after attacks and counter-attacks. In Gaza, a total blackout is anticipated if further internet infrastructure is damaged, making access to social media all but impossible before the apps are even opened. As we reported when Erdogan cut off access to social media following the Turkey earthquakes, access to the internet and these platforms is crucial during times of disaster and war. It can be a lifeline, connecting people to aid as well as to their loved ones.
Misinformation multiplied
On Wednesday, Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins called out a video seemingly from the BBC being circulated by Russian social media users, which claimed Ukraine was smuggling weapons to Hamas. The video was entirely fake. Others have highlighted video after video claiming to be footage of Israel bombing Gaza or Hamas airstrikes on Israel, which are in fact a combination of Assad airstrikes in Syria, fireworks in Algeria and even video game footage. Both faked and reappropriated content are running rampant on X (formerly Twitter), which is not necessarily anything new. But a Wired report suggests that the scale of the problem is new. Boosted posts from premium subscribers take precedence over once-verified news providers and hordes of fired misinformation researchers now spend their time updating their CVs rather than fighting fake news on the platform. And in an added twist fake news to smear both Muslims and Jews is also running rampant behind China’s Great Firewall on Sina Weibo.
Fair journalism
Getting news from on the ground is a huge challenge in this conflict, and it’s in that vacuum that the kind of misinformation we just outlined takes hold. So it’s all the more concerning that Israel’s public broadcaster Kan News reported that the Israeli cabinet is planning emergency legislation to ban Al Jazeera, which does have a presence on the ground in Gaza. This is not the first time Israel has announced a ban on the network. Back in 2017 Israel looked set to join a boycott by Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which all accused the network of sponsoring terrorism. Relationships between Al Jazeera and Israel have also been very strained since the May 2022 killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh. But if Al Jazeera is banned, one of the few media outlets reporting from within Gaza will go silent.
We know that conflicts can deal a blow to free expression. At Index we are here to ensure that doesn’t happen, or at least if it does happen that it doesn’t go unnoticed. We will continue to monitor the situation closely.
20 May 2022 | Opinion, Ruth's blog, United Kingdom
The Prince of Wales delivers the Queen’s Speech during the State Opening of Parliament 2022. Alastair Grant/PA Wire/PA Images
Unintended consequences and ideological incoherence. These phrases have dominated all discussions I have had in recent days about the British Government’s current approach to freedom of speech and expression.
There are now at least six pieces of legislation, outlined in last week’s Queen’s speech, which will be debated by the UK Parliament, which have a direct impact of our collective ability, in the UK, to exercise our rights to free expression. As individual pieces of legislation some are of value, but others are seemingly a political tool to set the scene for a battle about culture wars at the next British General Election, rather than to fix a problem in our society. That would be bad enough, but when considered in the round, rather than as individual laws, we are seeing a hotchpotch approach to free speech which is both ideologically incoherent and inconsistent as well as having numerous unintended consequences.
The best case in point is the proposed Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which sets out to protect academic endeavour on campus, aiming to ensure that some of the most controversial and/or obscure issues are protected areas of academic enquiry. The Bill aims to give academics stronger protections in law to both study and discuss these issues. I have written previously about my concern that this is attempting to fix a problem that doesn’t exist and that most of the proposed provisions are already accessible under other legal frameworks, but as a principle how could Index on Censorship not seek to protect academic freedom both at home and abroad? But that brings to me to one of the inherent contradictions in the Government’s overall approach.
The Bill would provide legal protections to enable an academic to give a lecture on replacement theory – the idea that white populations risk becoming minorities as a result of immigration and high birth rates among migrants – something which I consider to be a racist and pernicious doctrine.
Replacement theory, while abhorrent, is not considered to be illegal speech, it could however be viewed as harmful speech. If the lecture was, however, then placed on a social media platform, under the Government’s proposals in the Online Safety Bill, it could be considered to be “legal but harmful” content and subject to deletion. So, you could give a lecture using protected speech in an auditorium, but your students wouldn’t be able to access it online, to debate and challenge it, and other academics wouldn’t be able to challenge the assertions of the controversial academic in any meaningful way online. So how does that protect free speech?
The British Government is also proposing a new Bill of Rights to enshrine UK human rights in a post-Brexit world. The Justice Secretary, Rt Hon Dominic Raab MP, has stated that: “We will still be clamping down on those who try and use either media or free speech to incite violence, to radicalise terrorists, or to threaten children. All of those safeguards will be in place. But we’ve got to be able to strengthen free speech, the liberty that guards all of our other freedoms, and stop it being whittled away surreptitiously, sometimes without us really being conscious of it. So it will have a different status in the pecking order of rights and I think that will go a long way to protecting this country’s freedom of speech and our history, which has always very strongly protected freedom of speech.”
Which of course to someone like me who cherishes our right to freedom of expression is manna from heaven – or is it? Because at the same time as the Justice Secretary is seeking to make freedom of speech the foundational human right in the British system, the Home Secretary is reviewing the Official Secrets Act in the guise of a new National Security Bill. This time, an exemption for a public interest defence, a longstanding provision which protects journalists when they publish the accounts of whistle-blowers relating to national security, seems to have been forgotten. This completely undermines the premise of media freedom and journalism being able to hold power to account.
The British Government is also proposing new legislation to severely limit the right to protest in the UK under a new Public Order Bill and a new Data Reform Bill which will change our rights to privacy online. The Government is also consulting on new legislation to counter strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) in order to stop the misuse of our libel system to silence the media and campaigners.
In other words, the Government is speaking a great deal about freedom of speech in the UK at the moment, but seemingly without any of the relevant departments or Government agencies talking to each other. As the inherent contradictions in their use and definition of free speech become more obvious, we will see a national picture in the UK which is even more convoluted and probably open to legal challenge. Index is calling for a more strategic and defined approach to free speech in the UK and will be working with partners across the political spectrum to try and get to a place that protects all of our speech.
27 Apr 2022 | News and features, United States
On 25 April, Twitter announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk in a transaction valued at approximately US$44 billion. He had previously announced that he had amassed a 9% stake in the social media platform.
Ooh, that’s a lot of money.
Elon Musk is not short of a few dollars. He made $175 million from selling his stake in PayPal when it was sold to eBay. He was an early investor in electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, of which he is now CEO, and he founded rocket company SpaceX. His net worth is estimated at US$264.4 billion, making him the richest person in the world.
Why has he bought Twitter?
Musk is one of Twitter’s biggest users, with 86.2 million followers. He has hinted that he might want to buy it for several years. That said, he has had a love-hate relationship with the platform. In 2018, he suggested on Twitter that he had enough funding to take Tesla private but was subsequently fined $20 million as it had affected the market in Tesla shares, something frowned upon by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Why is everyone talking about free speech?
Elon Musk clearly wants Twitter to reconsider its approach to free speech. In the press release on the acquisition, Musk’s only statement was: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
What does Elon Musk think free speech is?
Elon Musk describes himself as a “free speech absolutist”, posting that he would not remove access to Russian news sources through his satellite internet company Starlink “except at gunpoint”.
Clarifying his position on Tuesday evening, Musk tweeted, “By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”
What about the freedom to criticise him and his companies?
He clearly does not want everyone to have free speech, most notably disgruntled Tesla employees and whistleblowers.
Isn’t Twitter quite hot on free expression anyway?
Twitter says in its policy on freedom of expression that “defending and respecting the user’s voice is one of our core values” and that this commitment is based on the the United States Bill of Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as being informed by a number of additional sources including the members of its Trust and Safety Council, relationships with advocates and activists around the globe, and by works such as United Nations Principles on Business and Human Rights.
In its policy on hateful conduct, Twitter says, “Free expression is a human right – we believe that everyone has a voice, and the right to use it. Our role is to serve the public conversation, which requires representation of a diverse range of perspectives.
We recognize that if people experience abuse on Twitter, it can jeopardize their ability to express themselves… For this reason, we prohibit behavior that targets individuals or groups with abuse based on their perceived membership in a protected category.”
What’s this he’s saying about authenticating humans? Sounds a bit weird.
It seems clear that while Musk is keen to allow “lawful” free speech, he is less keen on the ability for people to remain anonymous on the platform.
In its transparency report, Twitter says that “anonymous and pseudonymous speech is important to Twitter”.
Anonymity is particularly valuable for dissidents and for others who fear attack if they reveal their true identity.
Some of the world’s most authoritarian regimes want social media users to have to identify themselves. That should raise a red flag.
Will Musk’s acquisition see Twitter veer to the right?
Musk has been hard to pin down on his political views, with most seeing him as a social libertarian.
One of the criticisms often aimed at Twitter is that it and its staff are too woke.
However, Twitter’s own research shows that mainstream right-wing parties benefit at least as much, and often substantially more, from algorithmic personalisation as their left-wing counterparts.
It also found that content from US media outlets with a strong right-leaning bias are amplified marginally more than content from left-leaning sources.
The million-dollar question: Will Musk ask Twitter to reinstate Donald Trump’s Twitter account?
On 8 January 2021, Twitter announced that it would permanently ban former President Donald Trump from Twitter “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” following the storming of the US Capitol by his supporters.
Musk might try as part of his commitment to free speech to allow Trump back on but Trump himself says he won’t rejoin even though his own Truth Social platform appears to be struggling to make an impact.
And finally, will Musk’s acquisition give China greater influence over Twitter?
Musk’s fellow rocket-loving gazillionaire Jeff Bezos jumped on Twitter to ask whether Musk’s acquisition of Twitter would give the Chinese government “a bit of leverage over the town square?”.
The Amazon founder asked the question in response to another tweet by New York Times reporter Mike Forysthe that pointed out that China was Tesla’s second biggest market after the USA in 2021 and that Chinese battery makers are major suppliers for Tesla’s electric vehicles.
Bezos answered his own question, saying “probably not” and that a “more likely outcome…is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter”.
Thousands of Twitter users helpfully pointed out to Bezos that people could ask the same question of him following his acquisition of the Washington Post in 2013. User Sankrant Sanu wrote: “How much leverage does China have over Washington Post given the percentage of goods sold on Amazon that are dependent on that country for supply?
