The moral maze of cleaning the internet
Can online content be made a "safe space" without lurching into censorship?
On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we discussed how to clean up the internet. Is it possible to regulate it to remove harmful content, or does that inevitably lead to censorship of legitimate ideas?
Legislation currently going through the British parliament seeks to remove content which does “physical or psychological harm”. Certain things are clearly harmful — the ease with which children can access pornography online, for example. But won’t online pornographers be able to get round any such laws? Is the attempt to deal with online child abuse a Trojan horse for stifling ideas?
After all, who is to say what “psychological harm” actually is? Doesn’t this merely boil down to a subjective opinion, which leads inevitably to the silencing of expressions of which the people in charge disapprove?
The giant social media platforms have developed a reputation for shutting down material which contravenes the dominant progressive orthodoxies. Supporters of greater regulation say this would tackle that problem by introducing greater transparency and accountability. But wouldn’t it merely turn state agencies into censors instead?
Can we really make the internet into a “safe space” — or does that inevitably have totalitarian implications?
My co-panellists were Anne McElvoy, Mona Siddiqui and Giles Fraser. Our witnesses were Ellen Judson, senior researcher at the think-tank Demos; Ruth Smeeth, former Labour MP and now CEO of Index on Censorship; Will Gardner, chief executive of Childnet International; and Dr Joanna Williams, head of education and culture at the think-tank Policy Exchange.
You can listen to the programme on BBC Sounds here.
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