This past Friday Twitter issued what is perhaps one of the most remarkable statements in modern diplomatic history: it said both that it would not ban a world leader from its platform and that it reserved the right to delete official statements by heads of state of sovereign nations as it saw fit. Have we truly reached a point in human history where private companies now wield absolute authority over what every government on earth may say to their citizens in the online world that has become the defacto modern town square?
When it comes to censorship, we typically talk about governments censoring companies or individuals, determining what is acceptable speech within their borders. With the rise of the digital world, however, it is now companies that decide what governments are permitted to say. Moreover, as the web itself centralizes into a small number of walled gardens, the rules those companies set for acceptable speech govern the entire planet, enforcing a one-size-fits-all Western perspective onto the rich diversity of cultures that define our global society.
It is remarkable that in 2018 a private company in the US finds it entirely ordinary to issue a formal press release reminding the world of its ability to delete any statement by any head of state anywhere in the world, but that it would not do so lightly and that it will not delete their entire account. Even more extraordinary is that this comes in the aftermath of Facebook’s decision last month to completely eliminate any trace of one head of state from its platforms, removing not only his account, but deleting every post he ever made, wiping clean and essentially “airbrushing” him out of existence, Soviet style.
Of course, this doesn’t mean national governments have lost their ability to dictate what can be said or read online by their citizens. Germany’s new NetzDG law went into full effect at the start of this year, created largely in response to the country’s view that social media platforms were not taking seriously enough their responsibility to police hate speech by their users.
Indeed, while publicly arguing that the company had been doing all it possibly could to remove hate speech in Germany, the passage of NetzDG and its associated fines for non-compliance led Facebook to hire hundreds of new staff in Germany to oversee its hate speech efforts there.
For a company that had long claimed there was little more it could do, to suddenly hire hundreds of additional staff and dive headfirst into its moderation efforts with renewed vigor suggests that government intervention against social media platforms is having an impact. What years of negotiation and polite dialog could not achieve, the simple passage of a new law accomplished overnight. It also suggests that other countries are likely to follow Germany’s model, now that they know that monetary fines are sufficient to motivate Facebook to invest the necessary resources in moderation – a fact I have argued time and again.
It also reflects what has become the standard operating procedure of the major social platforms – proclaim they are doing all that is physically possible to moderate their platforms, only to hurriedly hire hundreds of additional staff in the aftermath of yet another public relations disaster. Why don’t the companies simply accept that a few thousand people aren’t enough to handle the billions of daily posts that cross its borders? Instead of hiring reviewers purely in reactive fashion, why doesn’t the company finally proactively hire staff before countries pass laws to force it to? The company did not respond to requests for comment on its staffing decisions.
At the same time, this renewed interest in content moderation does not come without the very real risk of censorship of uncomfortable voices and topics. The Intercept reported last month that Facebook had worked closely with Israeli officials to remove content the government objected to, especially material relating to its treatment of Palestinians. When asked for comment, the company did not deny meeting with Israeli officials, but argued that it was open to meeting with any government, including the Palestinian government. It said that government requests to remove content that violates local laws are blocked only in that country, while violations of its Community Standards are deleted globally. It further clarified that government-submitted requests for deletion are reviewed by the same reviewers that consider any notification of a possible Community Standards violation, but did not respond when asked whether government submissions are prioritized or whether reviewers are notified that the request came from a government or whether they may feel increased pressure to approve government-submitted deletion requests compared with a request from an ordinary user.
The company also did not respond to a request for comment as to whether this places poorer governments at a disadvantage to rich ones. The Intercept had reported that the Israeli government is able to fund a large team of reviewers who scour social media for posts to report to Facebook, while the Palestinian government is unable to devote such resources to monitoring the Hebrew-language press for similar speech. Even assuming that governmental submissions are treated no differently than those of ordinary users, it is clear that wealthier governments can afford to essentially augment Facebook’s moderation teams by hiring their own large moderation teams that perform prereview for Facebook, catching large volumes of material it would likely otherwise have missed.
Facebook emphasized that content deemed a violation of its Community Standards would be deleted globally and that posts flagged by governments that were confirmed to be such violations would be immediately deleted. The problem with this approach is that the nuanced detail of the Community Standards remain to this day largely secret, with the only really detailed documentation about them being a previous unauthorized press leak. Despite immense pressure, the company has steadfastly refused to release its Community Standards in full or to provide regular monthly updates that exhaustively list the entirety of the training material and guidelines it provides its reviewers. Arguing that this secrecy is necessary to prevent bad actors from knowing what they can get away with is disingenuous to say the least – they will learn regardless from trial and error and seeing what others get away with. Instead, secrecy ensures that the company does not have to subject its editorial decisions to the scrutiny of its two billion users and can make real-time changes in accordance with changing political winds.
Imagine for a moment a government that wishes to eliminate certain kinds of criticism of its actions or that wants to silence a particularly vocal minority in the country. All it would take is persuading Facebook to make a few tweaks to its Community Standards (entirely in secret of course) and without the outside world ever knowing, suddenly all of the material the government wants to delete is now considered a Community Standards violation and thus immediately banned globally. One could imagine any number of governments offering Facebook the choice of quietly adding a few entries to its Community Standards guidelines or else face new NetzDG-like laws in that country. Unsurprisingly, the company did not respond to a request for comment on this scenario.
Putting this all together, the digital revolution has both upended the traditional balance of power, granting private companies the power to censor governments, and at the same time reinforced the ultimate authority of governments as they pass new laws to force social media platforms to take action against oppressive speech. The success of Germany’s NetzDG law in forcing companies to revitalize their moderation efforts will almost certainly be mirrored by countries across the world, especially repressive regimes looking to quash any semblance of online discord. However, the absolute secrecy and unaccountability that shields these moderation decisions that now affect what a quarter of the earth’s population are permitted to say and do online in the walled gardens that are increasingly the internet suggest the once lofty vision of a web that lifts all the world’s people above the veil of censorship has instead become the greatest tool of censorship and surveillance that the most repressive regimes could never have imagined in their darkest dreams and which would make Orwell himself blush.
