Writing 07: Censorship

I believe that the Internet has become an essential public service that everyone has a right to access. In modern society, access to the Internet is becoming just as important as access to water, electricity, roadways, and other utilities. Sectors as far reaching as news, job searching, communication, and banking have all moved the majority of their activities onto the Internet. Just imagine how difficult modern life (and work especially) would be without email or web searching. Nowadays, if you don't have an email address, it's almost the same as not having a phone number or physical address. It's easy to forget how reliant we have become on Internet connectivity, but try to spend one month away from the Internet while working or studying at university and you'll quickly realize how necessary it is even for basic tasks.

Since I view the Internet as a utility, I believe that there should be as little restriction of content as possible online. As an analogy, it would be absurd (and unlawful) for a city to restrict roadway access to only people who support the current governor. In the same way, it would be similarly outrageous for companies like Google and Facebook to moderate content based on its political or social stances. Free speech only has power when it protects unpopular speech. That said, I still think that there are exceptions. For example, content moderation is acceptable and should be applied in the case of explicitly illegal content such as terrorism, human trafficking, and child pornography.

Moderation is ethical in the case of non-centralized, small, topic-based communities such as forums and other discussion groups (such as Facebook Pages and Reddit subreddits). In this case, these communities are analogous to private property where the landlords have the ability to set the rules of engagement. Moderation, though, should always be done by a human hand. When we entrust algorithms to moderation, we lose accountability, flexibility, and understanding. A recent example of this is with the many recent controversies with Youtube and its content management algorithms. These algorithms are notorious for shutting down channels automatically via copyright strikes despite fair use, while the creators have few avenues of recourse to combat these claims. Another brazen example of the ineptness of Youtube's algorithms has been in the recent Google account bans doled out to some users for spamming emojis during a Youtube livestream. This account ban affected all Google services and prevented people from accessing the Gmail and Drive services.

I am very concerned about online censorship, especially due to the actions of China with respect to the Great Firewall and the Great Cannon. As our society becomes more and more reliant on Internet as a means of communication and information exchange, nefarious governments and trolls gain more power over large parts of the general populace and can almost shape reality to their whims. There is no easy solution to this, but I believe the large amount of centralization in the modern web allows for these entities to easily gain control over the vast majority of web traffic. By pressuring just Google and Facebook, China can control the news stories viewed by the majority of Internet users. Unfortunately, decentralization is not enough. The Great Firewall isn't just a software issue. By controlling all Internet access points into the country, China can easily filter the packets flowing into and out of the country. There's no practical way for citizens to lay down their own Internet infrastructure to combat this. However, there is some promise in satellite Internet and projects like Starlink that may offer alternative Internet infrastructure that can circumvent Internet censorship through centralized pipelines.