Attention to Websites’ Uneven Application of Content Policies Seen Helping to Remedy Perceived Censorship
Public attention to uneven application of Web content policies may help bring about change so conservative religious and political views aren’t blocked on the likes of Apple, Facebook and Google, said experts who read a National Religious Broadcasters report (CD Oct 3 p4) on what NRB called censorship. Those opposing what they contend are unfair applications of policies against hate and other speech may need to better publicize those cases and stop using social media that block their views, said some panelists at an NRB event Thursday and experts in follow-up interviews. They said ISPs may not be engaging in such blocking because they face less liability for illegal content than do websites, plus such filtering is much less technically feasible for broadband providers than for sites.
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If consumers knew about such “chilling” examples as recounted in the report released Thursday (http://bit.ly/15M7GXn), they wouldn’t stand for it, said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Harold Furchtgott-Roth in an interview. The market probably wouldn’t tolerate the practice, so disclosure of it could lead to a change in websites’ behavior, said the former Republican FCC member who is also an economics consultant. “These are not crazy people” who, according to NRB, media and other reports show as having faced censorship, but “ordinary people with, I think, very commonly held positions,” said Furchtgott-Roth, who spoke at an NRB event last year on an earlier version of the study (CD Sept 13/12 p10). Among firsthand examples recounted at Thursday’s event was Apple’s removing from its iTunes platform a declaration that opposes abortion and nonheterosexual marriage, said Manhattan Declaration Executive Director Eric Teetsel, while radio talk-show host Todd Starnes said his political views were stifled. Websites mentioned in the report had no comment.
The sites can feel the “power of public pressure” to “push back against Internet intermediaries,” plus consumers have an “abundance” of media choices if those sites don’t change their policies, said Senior Research Fellow Adam Thierer of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center Technology Policy Program at the event. “I don’t think they've made their presence felt enough,” he said of those who object to such perceived censorship by companies. He “put my money where my mouth is, and I got the hell out of there” by no longer using Facebook, because it encourages oversharing of information, said Thierer. It appears websites have interpreted policies against hate speech “too broadly,” though there are no grounds to treat a website as a “quasi common-carrier public utility” by limiting their discretion to block any content they want, he said. The First Amendment ban on government squashing speech applies “zero” to Facebook, Google and other Web companies that “have a First Amendment right themselves of exclusion” as “private property,” said Trevor Burrus, research fellow at Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies.
Websites agreeing to voluntarily hold themselves to the same First Amendment obligations as the government could open the door to hate speech or perhaps illegal activity, said Furchtgott-Roth and Media Institute Vice President Rick Kaplar in interviews. “I'm not sure you want to go to a situation where websites are completely without any responsibility for what goes on,” leaving them “complete dens of iniquity -- anything goes,” said Furchtgott-Roth. It would be difficult to implement the industrywide First Amendment standards the NRB wants websites to put in place because of the subjectivity involved in deciding what should be exempt from being blocked, said Kaplar. “One person’s hate speech is another person’s religious expression,” he said. “When you get into the details, it wasn’t the solution that you thought it would be.” The industry “essentially” already has a voluntary content policy because First Amendment law doesn’t apply to websites, said Kaplar, whose institute is funded by traditional media companies and their associations.
ISPs haven’t run afoul of the same censorship concerns websites face since it would be a much harder task even if they wanted to filter content, something even the National Security Agency would struggle with, said Furchtgott-Roth. Courts would never hold an ISP liable for certain illegal content, he said. “They're a common carrier -- they're not supposed to be reviewing the content.” There have been few instances of ISPs’ blocking data traffic, Thierer told us during Q-and-A. “We don’t really have many examples on the ISP side,” unlike with sites, he said.
Efforts to start a dialogue with websites to change content policies haven’t borne much fruit, we were told. NRB has “reached out in a variety of different forms to all the companies we mentioned today,” said General Counsel Craig Parshall. “We have had limited success.” In one case, Facebook did communicate, he said. “There has not been a receptivity to a real dialogue with how they can fashion their policies to be free-speech friendly,” he said of sites generally. “We have had limited meetings, telephone conversations and letters exchanged with these companies, with almost no success.” Starnes, the self-described “bad boy” of Facebook, which he said has blocked his content, has found it hard to get in touch with the company, he said. There are “no explanations,” he added. “So there really is no understanding of what exactly I did to violate their community standards.” (jmake@warren-news.com)