The Liberal International Human Rights Committee (LI HRC) was proud to welcome Jacob Mchangama, an expert on freedom of expression, to deliver a keynote presentation on free speech in the digital space and the challenges of its regulation and governance.
In an engaging discussion with LI HRC Chair Astrid Thors, Mchangama described current forms of censorship as a historically observed “knee-jerk reaction” to a revolution in communications technology.
Furthermore, the digital revolution poses unique challenges to the safeguarding of human rights. The “platformisation” of the internet through which meaningful engagement on digital platforms relies on access to mass audiences allows private actors to act as “choke points” for the spread of information.
Even well-intentioned governance efforts can be open to abuse. “What is particularly ironic is that the liberal democracies of Europe have been at the forefront of forging the chains with which social media has been bound in today’s world,” Mchangama remarked.
Germany, a liberal democracy, implemented a Network Enforcement Act obliging digital platforms to remove illegal content that was copied in authoritarian countries to target dissent.
Mchangama stressed that robust freedom of speech includes space for dissent and cautioned against universal regulatory censorship of controversial speech. “It becomes more difficult for the liberal part of the world to fight this phenomenon if liberal democracies are not willing to stand firm on the principle of free speech.”
Instead, “platforms should have more control over their content” by empowering users with the tools to filter content that offends them. These filters could also be developed by anti-discrimination NGOs.
In observance of these “good faith effort[s] predictably gone wrong,” LI included in its Liberal Principles of Digitalisation and Human Rights the Principle 10: “Legislation on content moderation, aimed at managing hate speech, disinformation, or other malicious content online, must not arbitrarily restrict the freedom of speech or encourage private companies to pre-emptively censor content.”
Mchangama is a lawyer by profession and the founder and executive director of Justitia, Denmark’s first judicial think tank. He is a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education in Washington and is a frequent commentator for free speech and human rights. He hosts the podcast “Clear and Present Danger: a history of free speech” and is the author of MEN Ytringsfrihedens Historie i Danmark (BUT: The History of Freedom of Expression in Denmark). His new book, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media, will be published in February 2022.
