The Negative Impacts of Censorship on the Internet

This paper will be primarily focused on the various problems stemming from the censorship of materials found on the internet. Extending from that, it will discuss the author’s opinions on the best possible way for the regulation of posts on the internet. Finally, this paper will elaborate on the author’s views regarding who should be held responsible for the regulation of online content.

Censoring materials online can be the root cause of many different problems. Take the case of the recent Tumblr censorship which occurred in December of 2018 as an example. According to Powell, due to the new censorship regulations released by the CEO of Tumblr Jeff D’Onofrio on the 3rd of December, safe spaces for the underrepresented groups such as women and the LGBTQ community are destroyed. Powell also takes a jab at tech corporations who all claim to want to create a safe haven for diverse communities but destroying it at the same time (Powell, 2018).

Furthermore, censoring content online as Tumblr did isn’t necessarily the wisest decision either. In an article by The Verge, it writes that almost thirty percent of all of Tumblr’s traffic has dropped due to the censorship (Liao, 2019). Besides, according to firsthand experience, the author would like to note that soon after the censorship of Tumblr took place, part of the community who were upset with the restrictions found themselves moving to a newly made website named “bdsmblr.com”, a sexually explicit version of Tumblr, thus making the censorship ineffective in a way.

A similar problem is presented when we are examining censorship is the loss of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is the belief that access to all sites on the internet should be equal regardless of their source or content, and that internet providers cannot reduce the speed at which websites are reached nor can they limit which sites can be accessed. In the paper Net Neutrality, Network Capacity, and Innovation at the Edges, its authors propose the idea that internet providers now have the ability to slow down bandwidth speed as they so please. (Choi, Jeon & Kim, 2018) This could be considered as a form of implicit censorship because these companies can now increase the time it takes for internet users to reach a website that their service provider disagrees with, such as an alternate internet service provider’s website. Similarly, internet service providers can simply remove content that they do not agree with. Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps claims that the censoring of political speech during an AT&T Webcast illustrates the dire need for Net Neutrality. (FCC Commissioner Connects Pearl Jam Censorship To Net Neutrality…, 2007)

The AT&T version of a recording of Pearl Jam’s song “Daughter” had phrases referencing George Bush removed, whereas they remained in the live recording of the song. Copps said that with the removal of Net Neutrality, there is nothing preventing other companies from censoring more content that they distribute on the internet. (FCC Commissioner, 2007) Situations like this can be harmful as it clearly restricts both the freedom of speech, which contradicts the First Amendment, as well as the freedom of information for the general public.

With all of these problems arising from censorship, we should strive to further seek better ways to perfect the censoring process. Basing off on the four modes of regulation by Larry Lessig, which are: the Law, the Market, the Code, and Social Norms, the author believes while social norms would be the most effective in regulating content, a combination of all four is still needed to produce the best process of censorship. The author’s views on these modes will be elaborated further in the next few paragraphs.

Using laws to regulate the internet can prove to be tricky, as depicted in the case of the “ILOVEYOU” virus of May 2000. According to Knight, the creator of this virus named Onel De Guzman who was found to be in the Philippines was not prosecuted for the damage they had done internationally as there were no existing laws in the Philippines at the moment for a case such as this. Instead, Guzman was only charged for credit card fraud which was part of what the ILOVEYOU virus did (Knight, 2000). As such, the author believes that there should be more substantial international laws on the internet in place before we can turn to these laws and rely on them as regulation.

The author believes that the Market, on the other hand, is one of the weakest ways to regulate a website. This is because there will always be companies who will willingly post advertisements on a website no matter how morally ambiguous or wrong a website may be. The website which I’ve mentioned earlier, “bdsmblr.com” has advertisements supporting it, just like how “PornHub” has them too. As such, a Market driven censorship regulation does almost nothing at all. Taking a different perspective of Market driven regulation, the author would like to reuse the same Tumblr example as used earlier in this paper. Forbes reports that one of the main reasons why Tumblr released their recent censorship policies was due to the fact that their app was removed from the Apple App Store in November of 2018 due to sexual images of children found on the site. (Sands, 2018).

Of course, with one of the major mobile application stores not supporting a website or company’s app, it only makes sense that the website or company would have to rethink its decisions and choices in order to redeem itself from this Market-driven pressure. This is because of the potential lack of support from such a major website could cause its company to suffer severe financial losses. Although this may be a good example of how the Market can positively affect censorship regulations, but as discussed earlier, these regulations were almost ineffective due to how the situation was handled.

Code is a form of regulation which the author believes works better than both the Law and the Market, although it still isn’t the best. In an article written by Fan Yang in 2016 for the journal “New Media & Society”, it talks about the Chinese government has set up filters in their code to help filter out words that are deemed to be against their repressive regimes, extending so far to even censor out words which are homonyms to the actual words (Yang, 2016). However, at the stage of technology in which we are at now, code and algorithm are still unable to completely carry out the censorship the way China wishes it to be. This is because humans are still able to be creative and come up with more ways to go around the code. For example, in Yang’s paper, it also talks about how people on the internet kept evading the “Great Firewall” by endlessly creating new terms which get more and more inconspicuous. One such example would be how the Chinese netizens eventually came up with a term, “UA989”, to refer to a blind man who was arrested in America. Not only that, Chinese netizens could also use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) in order to overcome this firewall of censorships which the Chinese government has set up (Yang, 2016).

When it comes to the social-norm, the author believes that it is the best way to regulate content due to several reasons. Should there be a post on a website such as Facebook which consists of immoral or banned material, the users who see it can report it to Facebook so that their administrators could look into it and make sure that it really is unwelcome content. It’s not only Facebook that has this feature. The major video sharing site, YouTube, has a flagging system, and another giant social media platform, Twitter also has a report function. Both of these work the same way as Facebook does, where they all rely on the community to give feedback on what could be deemed as unwelcome as according to their policies. Just as discussed in class regarding the case of the website, AutoAdmit, where its adamant standing on being unmoderated caused it to have a bad reputation, it is clear that there should be some form of social-norm regulations whether it be having administrators or having the community of the website work together to form a safe space for all (Tsou, 2019).

With that said, all the different modes of regulation could still work hand in hand to help create a much better way to regulate the internet and what is being posted on it. First of all, the author proposes that instead of prosecuting criminals who use the internet to do heinous activities based on their own nation’s laws, we should have a set of laws that could regulate the entire internet world. This proposal would be akin to having the internet be treated as if it is its own country, with its own set of laws. This is because without these universal laws, there could be potential criminals out there causing harm to others globally via the internet but not getting the punishment that they deserve as there are loopholes in the current law system. Although it is not ideal due to the highly capitalistic society we live in, we could still use the market as a regulation mode by having it be a guide via what websites respectable companies would like to post their advertisements on or the websites that they choose to sponsor.

In addition to the structure that those two modes of regulation, code could be used as an extra layer of regulation in order to further enhance the censoring process. For example, by using algorithms we can effectively scan through user input for materials which are deemed unsafe for the community then blocking such materials from getting on the internet in the first place. Of course, these algorithms won’t always work perfectly. There will always be some indecent material slipping through the walls of code.

Likewise, there may also be perfectly fine material that would be wrongfully deemed unsafe to pass through by those algorithms. In these cases, regulation by social norm can be added on to fortify the regulation process. The administrators could be notified about these mistakes by the users and consequently make the right amends. The author suggests this as a last resort for two reasons. One, this would be the most cost effective way of working through the problem of regulation, as the websites would have to hire fewer people to help with administration regulations. Two, as some material which are trying to pass through the code wall may be unsettling and can cause psychological damage to the administrators over extended exposure, it would be safer for the administrators to be exposed to the least amount of such material as possible.

In a way, the author believes that everyone should be held responsible for the regulation of the contents of the internet. While a nation’s government should not remove Net Neutrality for its public, they should be held responsible for the passing of just laws with regards to the internet. Although these laws should not restrict the users’ freedom in expressing their thoughts, but rather prevent users from posting or expressing offensive or derogatory content which could potentially harm others. This may be a delicate process, as there exists a fine line between what is considered to be freedom of speech and what crosses that line to be slanderous and hurtful to others.

Despite that, the author believes that over time and much refinement, we can achieve laws which fulfill these requirements and at the same time get the job done. Not only that, all internet users should have the responsibility for the actions that they take while surfing the net. While it is understandable that different people may have varying moral codes which they adhere to, everyone should follow their conscience and not take part in actions which oppose their moral code. Although a keyboard and a monitor may seem like a good wall of defense against any possible retributions, it still isn’t a good reason as to why a user could be allowed to post unwelcome content on the websites they visit.

Another way that everyday users could be held responsible for regulating content on the internet is to use the report function found on websites well. Firstly, users should not report content on a whim, as it could overwhelm the administrators with extra work and prevent them from regulating other, more offensive reported content. Secondly, users should report content which is truly offensive, such as hate speech, cyber-bullying, or derogatory content that they come across, so as to prevent others from seeing and getting hurt by it unintentionally.

All in all, although the current process of censorship still has its problems and defects, the author believes that in due time, we can achieve a form of censorship which causes fewer problems for all users of the internet. This can be achieved by using the strengths of the various modes of regulation to benefit the process of censorship. Lastly, in order to improve regulation on the internet to make it a better place for everyone, all that are involved such as the government, as well as internet users, should be held responsible.