The Architecture of Invisible Censorship: How Digital and Meatspace Censorship Differ
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Data acquisitionArchitectureDigital signalComputer clusterComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Software testingDisk read-and-write headDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Term (mathematics)Meeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Data miningSoftwareVariety (linguistics)Different (Kate Ryan album)Meeting/Interview
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Right angleInstance (computer science)Similarity (geometry)Block (periodic table)Term (mathematics)WordSoftwareWeb 2.0BlogLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Video gameIn-System-ProgrammierungCASE <Informatik>Extension (kinesiology)Degree (graph theory)Equivalence relationTelecommunicationDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Sheaf (mathematics)Set (mathematics)Instance (computer science)Key (cryptography)Lecture/Conference
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Electronic mailing listPhysical lawRegular graphSpeech synthesisIndependence (probability theory)Directory serviceLecture/Conference
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Inclusion mapInternetworkingMögliche-Welten-SemantikLine (geometry)Lecture/Conference
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Physical lawSpeech synthesisCatastrophismInstance (computer science)MultilaterationDifferent (Kate Ryan album)E-bookOrder (biology)Pairwise comparisonProcess (computing)Endliche ModelltheorieCoprocessorLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Streaming mediaMachine visionEntire functionCyberspaceInternetworkingTerm (mathematics)Pairwise comparisonMultiplication signShift operatorCategory of beingLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Term (mathematics)Category of beingMultiplication signRight angleShift operatorLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Regulator geneSpeech synthesisState of matterDirection (geometry)Moment (mathematics)Asynchronous Transfer ModeForm (programming)Extension (kinesiology)Entire functionLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Regular graphIndependence (probability theory)State of matterRegulator geneTerm (mathematics)InternetworkingState of matterOrder (biology)SpacetimeSource codeLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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DigitizingShift operatorDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Category of beingRing (mathematics)Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Shift operatorSpeech synthesisContext awarenessLecture/Conference
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Conformal mapSurface of revolutionMultiplication signReading (process)Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Independence (probability theory)Form (programming)Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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State of matterLecture/Conference
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State of matterIndependence (probability theory)Form (programming)Category of beingInstance (computer science)Lecture/Conference
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Term (mathematics)State of matterRule of inferenceWeb serviceMaxima and minimaMechanism designLecture/Conference
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Operator (mathematics)Row (database)Web serviceDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Instance (computer science)Standard deviationTerm (mathematics)InternetworkingContent (media)Form (programming)Speech synthesisSpacetimeLecture/Conference
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Mathematical singularityDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Search engine (computing)WebsiteWeb serviceLecture/Conference
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WebsiteResultantTerm (mathematics)State of matterProcess (computing)Statement (computer science)Content (media)Natural numberLecture/Conference
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CASE <Informatik>InternetworkingBasis <Mathematik>Row (database)Lecture/Conference
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Row (database)Traffic reportingPhysical systemState of matterDirection (geometry)Contrast (vision)Disk read-and-write headLecture/Conference
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Regulator geneTraffic reportingRow (database)Independence (probability theory)Right angleState of matterLecture/Conference
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Exterior algebraWeb serviceTerm (mathematics)CausalityCategory of beingRight angleDesign by contractLecture/Conference
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FacebookRule of inferenceSpacetimeFacebookGame controllerExistenceLecture/Conference
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AuthorizationTerm (mathematics)Web serviceLecture/Conference
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Web serviceDecision theoryTerm (mathematics)FacebookPhysical lawLecture/Conference
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State of matterFacebookPhysical lawInternetworkingTraffic reportingSpeech synthesisFreewareDependent and independent variablesExpressionSoftware testingLecture/Conference
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InternetworkingCognitionRegulator geneSpeech synthesisFormal grammarWeb serviceBlogLecture/Conference
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State of matterDependent and independent variablesQuicksortRule of inferenceBlogComputer-assisted translationCoefficient of determinationLecture/Conference
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CodecState of matterRight angleFigurate numberProcess (computing)Regulator geneMultiplication signSpeech synthesisVirtual machinePoint (geometry)Sound effectSemiconductor memoryInternetworkingInstance (computer science)Goodness of fitCASE <Informatik>VideoconferencingLecture/Conference
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InformationLecture/Conference
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ForceInternetworkingComputer networkBasis <Mathematik>Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Speech synthesisMeeting/Interview
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Process (computing)Context awarenessSpeech synthesisRegulator geneLecture/Conference
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Revision controlMereologySpeech synthesisInformationObservational studyMultiplication signCASE <Informatik>Disk read-and-write headCausalityTerm (mathematics)Meeting/InterviewComputer animationLecture/Conference
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MassRight anglePhysical lawDependent and independent variablesSound effectCausalityLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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NumberAddress spaceFacebookEvent horizonError messageCASE <Informatik>Multiplication signLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Right angleAssociative propertyPattern languageMeeting/Interview
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Power (physics)Centralizer and normalizerWeb serviceMereologyLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Speech synthesisFacebookWeb serviceInternetworkingComputing platformDifferent (Kate Ryan album)MereologySearch algorithmTerm (mathematics)Physical systemMultiplicationAxiom of choiceSelf-organizationExterior algebraBitCASE <Informatik>System callSimilarity (geometry)VideoconferencingHand fanCategory of beingOperator (mathematics)Meeting/Interview
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Data acquisitionInsertion lossOperator (mathematics)Control flowMultiplication signLecture/ConferenceComputer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:21
Excellent. I'm very happy to be here, and good to talk to all of you. Today I'll be talking about an idea I've been mulling over in my head for a while, but haven't really got a chance to write down or present. So you guys are my test audience for this, and please do be kind.
00:41
I'll be talking about this idea called invisible censorship that I've been thinking about, and how it's currently architected. One other way to think about this could be in terms of how digital and needs-based censorship actually differ.
01:02
For those of you who came here expecting Nanny Janssen, I'm not her, unfortunately. My name is Pranesh Prakash. You can find me on multiple networks, and I have multiple affiliations. Primarily I work with this thing called the Center for Internet and Society based
01:22
in Bangalore as a policy director, and do work in a variety of different topics. But jumping straight into the meat of the topic as it were, there are some similarities, people would say, between offline and online censorship.
01:42
For instance, they would say the same human rights should apply both offline and online. There was a big debate in the Human Rights Committee about this, and this was adopted as a principle recently. They would say that what we think of in terms of publishers and printing presses offline are
02:01
well mirrored online in terms of your web host, etc., or the blog software that you're using. They would also say that there are things like common carriers, just as you wouldn't hold the telephone company, or you wouldn't hold the postal service liable for the terrorist threats that are sent through them.
02:27
Similarly, you shouldn't hold ISPs liable, goes the common refrain. Yet, people also think they're different, that online intermediaries need a much stronger degree of protection than offline.
02:42
We don't have, for instance, the equivalent of India's Section 79 of the IT Act, or the US's Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, etc., for offline players, really.
03:00
There's a different set of case law, etc., around that. People would contend you can't extend simple ideas of sovereignty online because your jurist, that world is borderless, whereas all the regular laws you have around that restrict freedom of speech are restricted to national borders.
03:21
There are further differences. There's just way too much speech online to regulate. Thinking about India, say, since 1947, when we got independence, how much would people have expressed themselves through newspapers and television and radio,
03:45
and compare that to how many people would actually have found a voice since the late 90s on the Internet? In this thought experiment, I think it's clearly the Internet that becomes the winner. People can directly express themselves in a way that just wasn't possible earlier,
04:05
which has resulted in too much unedited, impolite, indecent, threatening speech, which has resulted in a catastrophe for our speech laws, and we should just not try even to regulate it. Yet, there are similars. In India, for instance, some things that are not unlawful,
04:26
offline, are suddenly made illegal online through one law that I'll talk about a bit later. There are similarities. People would say, forget about just the substantive comparison of what's illegal and what's illegal, but even the processes should be seen. Just as you can't ban a book without a court order,
04:45
you shouldn't be able to ban an e-book without a court order either. Yet, there are differences. Technology makes censorship impossible. Politicians and bureaucrats just don't understand technology, which is why they're making all these awful attempts at Internet censorship.
05:03
And there is this entire stream of utopian and anarchic thought that existed since at least the early 90s when it comes to visions of cyberspace. I don't think there are any clear answers. We can just go back and forth in terms of comparisons, in terms of metaphors, etc.
05:25
But what I find useful in thinking about these issues is actually to think of it in terms of categories and how these categories shift over time. So, this is one way of categorizing censorship based on actors who's acting and the kind of act that it is.
05:50
So, there can be direct, naked state regulation of speech. In democratic countries, this is not really the preferred mode anymore.
06:05
At the very least, it's happening to a much lesser extent now than it used to. Then there is this entire monopoly of state-compelled private regulations, state-aided and state-independent private regulation. These are the most common forms of censorship now in a way.
06:28
State-compelled private regulation is what generally happens in terms of Internet censorship, because the governments don't really own the infrastructure anymore. So, the governments have to go on to other people to be able to regulate these spaces and have to send out orders to others.
06:46
And this applies not just to censorship, but think about surveillance as well. I think most of these categories actually apply to when we think about surveillance too. And I think these categories, which I'm not getting into too detailed a bit right now,
07:03
they help us think about the shifts that's caused both in the difference between traditional and digital censorship, as well as the shift between what I think of as visible and invisible censorship. And I think these two shifts are happening simultaneously.
07:23
And now I will explain what is invisible censorship. But first, think about the fact that censorship is never, never just pure silencing of speech.
07:41
Censorship is very productive. It always has been. Whatever the context you take and you try and apply it to that, it always has been productive. Of course, there's a huge price we pay for censorship. Of course, people have died resisting censorship.
08:02
Of course, people have been jailed. Of course, conformity is created in society. Of course, you lose autonomy. It's an affront to dignity. Of course, all of these things are true. But at the same time, you always fight back. Whatever kinds of examples you take, we've always fought back,
08:22
whether it's in Franco's pain or whether it is in China through the Cultural Revolution. And even now, whether it is political censorship or whether it is cultural censorship, whether it is online or offline, whether it is whichever era you take,
08:42
we've always created literature about it, either directly confronting it or indirectly. We've always joked about it. We've always resisted and subverted censorship. Yet this, I fear, would be more difficult in the era of invisible censorship.
09:01
How does invisible censorship arise? Because the older forms of censorship, which were primarily either societal censorship, societal censure for what you say and do, or direct state censorship,
09:21
the state saying what you can and can't say, those things which are easy to see are changing. With technology, what we're getting is more and more private censorship that is unaccountable. We're getting these three forms that I spoke about,
09:40
state-compel, state-aided, and state-independent censorship, and also self-censorship. And that's also an important category that's very difficult to see. You don't know when you are self-censoring. It's not easy to see when someone else is self-censoring, for instance. And the difficulty with invisible censorship, the difficulty caused by it,
10:04
is that we cannot fight that which we can't see. And perhaps it might be more easier to actually go through some examples of what I'm thinking about in terms of invisible censorship.
10:22
So state-compel private regulation, one easy example would be the intermediaries guidelines rules that were passed by the Indian government, not by the parliament, but by the executive a few years ago. What did they do with this law? They basically said that these minimum terms of service clauses
10:45
should be there in the terms of service of all intermediaries, regardless of who you are, and this is a mechanism of enforcement of these terms of service. If you receive a complaint from any private individual about violation of these, you have to remove the content.
11:03
And where did they get these standard terms from? From things like the TOS for World of Warcraft, for Yahoo, et cetera. And if you want to study the world of policy laundering, I think this is a rife world of examples to actually look at
11:22
how all of these policies are so similar to each other. And if you want to see the differences between policy and practice, then also you really do need to look through these. And the only way to actually observe it, the only way to actually study it is by becoming a participant in this space.
11:45
Because no records are kept of who sent a complaint to which intermediary of any sort and whether the intermediary acted upon it or not. So what we at the Center for Internet and Society did was we did a policy sting operation.
12:03
So we sent fake, fraudulent, frivolous, and I think fun complaints to seven different intermediaries who were of different kinds of intermediaries as well. Some were search engines, some were e-commerce websites, et cetera.
12:21
And what we found was eventually six out of the seven complied. In reality five complied, but because one was relying on the other for its services, they ended up with six complying. And thousands of websites were removed, either from search results or a bunch of comments from a newspaper were removed
12:45
without anyone actually knowing about it, without anyone finding out about it. And this shows the fact that there is no transparency at all in this process. There was no visibility about what was and was not removed. There was no visibility in terms of due process and principles of natural justice.
13:06
There was no chance given to those whose content was removed to be able to say, this is actually a perfectly legal statement that I've made. And not just legal, it's a perfectly sensible statement. And why are you considering this offensive?
13:24
No person ever wrote back to CIS to ask these questions. And most of the intermediaries didn't raise these questions either. They removed it. In some cases they removed it after telling us that they wouldn't remove it, which is interesting. And obviously this is resulting in oversensorship, stuff that is perfectly legal.
13:45
And not just perfectly legal, but perfectly acceptable in society was also removed from the Internet on the basis of our complaints. And there were no records of this whatsoever. Nobody ever found out about it.
14:01
If we hadn't told the world in a report that we wrote that this has happened, that we were able to get all of this removed, nobody would have found out. Contrast this with the system of direct state regulation, where this is much more obvious.
14:22
There are court records. It's published in the newspapers. You find out about it. You can challenge it. But this you can't challenge just because you don't know. There are other examples. State-aided private regulation. So one easy example of this is copyright, which has copyright enforcement needs the same infrastructure as that of censorship.
14:46
There's state-independent private regulation, which has different jurisprudential justifications. So one of them is the idea of contracts, that this is a service we're offering. If you don't want the service, don't accept the terms of service.
15:03
Use one of the thousands of alternative services that exist. The other is the idea of property rights. So think about a restaurant. You can't just go into a restaurant and hold a rally for whatever political cause you believe in, because that's private property.
15:21
And the likes of Facebook employ a similar justification for why they should be allowed to put whatever kinds of rules they want for their space. Except that that's not necessarily the rhetoric they use. The rhetoric they use is that of innovation, that of freedom, of autonomy.
15:45
And all of this rhetoric allows for the existence of an infrastructure of private control. And so when we think about intermediary liability, we have to think much more deeply about what exactly we're protecting intermediaries from.
16:01
And now we're living in a world where it's difficult to say what's private and what's state. It really is. I often don't know. So municipal Wi-Fis, there's a recent paper that will be coming out that I read a draft of, where the author talks about how municipal Wi-Fis in the U.S. have terms of service that the government can't really put in place.
16:31
But when he as a legal scholar delves into it, it's actually a difficult decision to say whether the municipality can do this or not. Because it's, of course, it's a public-private partnership and infrastructure is created out of that.
16:48
Facebook, Facebook is larger than many states. Facebook is almost as large as India. And yet, Facebook does not have to abide by any of the laws that the Indian government has.
17:04
Facebook does not have to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which applies to states. And whatever, however we conceptualize it, I disagree with and quite respectfully with Frank LaRue,
17:21
who's the U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, who's done some fantastic, fantastic reports for the U.N. on free speech issues. But one thing where I disagree with him is he likens the Internet to La Plaza Publica, a public square.
17:45
I don't think the Internet is at all like a public square. Perhaps it should be, but it isn't. It is more like shopping malls. And we have to be cognizant of that fact if we are to change it, if we are to effectively challenge it. And we also have to be cognizant of the fact that not all speech regulation is harmful,
18:04
that there are many kinds of speech that society should try and curb, should try and minimize. And we have to be cognizant of the fact that not all private censorship is bad either. If I'm running a service for a few of my friends or if I'm running a blog
18:24
and I don't want pictures of cats and dogs or if I don't want things that otherwise would be legal, I should be free to actually state that I don't want it and delete any comments that violate my policy.
18:43
So not all private censorship is bad and not all private entities need to follow all the rules and have all the responsibilities of a state. And so this becomes a very complicated question in essence.
19:03
And I think the question of how do we unpack this world of both state and private, of state-like private regulation of speech is a very complicated one and that's the same kind of complication where we have to delve into that when we think about invisible censorship.
19:27
They're intrinsically linked and there are no easy answers. But in the immediate, one thing we can do is make things visible through greater transparency.
19:40
One thing we can do is to increase the memory of the Internet as it were, the way that the Wayback Machine for instance does or for increasing transparency, the way that the Chilling Effects Clearing House does. And Google actually in some of this does a good job too. Whenever there's a video removed from YouTube, you know of the fact that it was there at one point of time.
20:06
It never just disappears. You're told that it was removed and in most cases you're even told why it was removed. That might not necessarily help. It might be a wrong reason but you're given that information and that I think is very important.
20:21
Similarly when Google removes something from its search results, it says something that would have otherwise shown up for the search criteria is now not showing up. That's very important and that I think is the beginning of this fight to make invisible censorship visible.
20:42
Thank you very much. So we have a few minutes for questions. Are there any questions? Oh yeah.
21:02
So actually if you say that some censorship might be helpful because it is desirable in a society because there is something said that people won't like. If you say hate speech but whatever that would be. I'd like to challenge you on that because I think that if you think of a grown-up society,
21:26
a society can always say okay no we don't want that. Somebody says something and he can be challenged. So I don't think that we should then trust private companies to do this job for us.
21:42
Especially if we see that these companies are often from completely different cultural contexts. So if we have the American companies, how can we trust them to regulate speech in Europe or even in Asia where they're even less familiar with traditions.
22:03
So I'm like very maximalist maybe on not removing stuff. So you didn't catch that last part. I'm very extremist in not putting stuff down because I think we should trust society and we should trust debates on this.
22:21
I think this is also the best way to increase transparency about societal issues. I agree. I don't necessarily agree that more speech is always the right answer to speech you find offensive. Sometimes that doesn't work. Speech can be harmful and you don't necessarily have a way of countering it with more speech.
22:45
Defamation is, and there are some studies done around false headlines and false news articles, information being carried on them and how corrections don't really help solve the problem, how retractions later don't really help solve the problem, etc.
23:02
But that issue apart, I largely agree with you that, and when I was talking about censorship, that some censorship might actually be desirable, I wasn't necessarily thinking in terms of private infrastructures of censorship, but societal censorship, that if you find some speech objectionable,
23:24
I think you should actually take out a march in the middle of your public square about it. You should challenge ideas in a vibrant democratic society. So yeah, I think we're in agreement. Any other questions?
23:41
Yeah, hi Pranesh. Thanks for your talk, I like it a lot. I have a question on one other part of the invisible censorship, which was also the self-censorship that you mentioned, right? I mean, in that case, basically, do you have any ideas on how to record that? Because I mean, how do you record something that in your head you put it away?
24:00
Yeah, I think one cause for self-censorship is surveillance, is mass surveillance, right? And that's something we do need to attack, if you're to attack this idea of self-censorship. One cause of self-censorship is when there is excessive societal or legal censorship
24:26
and the chilling effect that that causes. So even if there might not be a law against what you want to say, you feel that what you're about to say might violate something, even when that isn't necessarily true.
24:41
That is also a cause of self-censorship, and so the only solution to that is a more open and free society. So that might sound like a glib response, but I don't see any other way of actually targeting self-censorship.
25:03
My name is Susanne, and I appreciate your talk so much. And a few weeks ago, there was a lot of fuss about the TTIP treaty between North America and Europe. And during that time, there was a political initiative here that also rallied in Facebook.
25:22
And I tried to invite a number of my friends in my Facebook address book, I tried to invite them to that Facebook event. And I got very obscure Facebook error messages that said, I'm sorry, because of your behavior in the past,
25:43
we cannot allow you to invite people to this event. And I tried to complain to Facebook, and it was very like a black hole, it was like Franz Kafka to the Germans amongst us. Do you have similar experiences? Do you have an opinion on that?
26:02
I'd be very interested. Thank you. I think that's a very interesting question. There are, I think, quite literally thousands of examples one could pick up of these kinds of censorship,
26:23
really because it does affect your right of association. And I think there are actually existing thousands of such examples. But how do we counter this? That becomes a tough part.
26:41
One of the things we do need is to not be dependent on centralized services like Facebook, not give too much power to these centralized corporations, to use more federated technologies. I think that is part of the answer.
27:03
Part of the answer lies in all of these things. We have to change our thinking about corporations in a world where they span across multiple jurisdictions, in a world where they're mostly dealing with intangibles like our data and our private information,
27:25
in a world where they're dealing with things like intellectual property, etc. I think we need to change many of our thoughts about corporations. And we also need to encourage what a legal scholar in the US calls
27:42
the safety laboratories of the Internet. The fact that all of these different platforms have different kinds of systems for dealing with different kinds of services. And between similar platforms also there might be different terms of service
28:02
and different ways that they operate. And I think we need to encourage that so that you actually have a meaningful choice between multiple services so that you actually can say Facebook is really restrictive. It doesn't allow for meaningful political speech. Right now it's search algorithm for Facebook has changed,
28:23
making commercial organizations show up before non-commercial organizations, etc. So you need to have a meaningful alternative. Sometimes there isn't one, in which case we need to think about how to be regulated maybe a little bit more like a state.
28:42
But otherwise we need to create these alternatives and sustain them. Thank you very much. Applause. Time is over. So just a short technical break and then we're moving to Venezuela.
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