| The UK is leading the charge for legislation [0] to force platforms to impose certain types of censorship. Youtube and the others are just getting ahead of curve. They have known what's coming since they were invited into No. 10 to discuss these issues with Theresa May and Amber Rudd in 2017. The legislation is based on the principle that everyone has the right to say what they want to say, but they have no right to be heard by others. This phraseology was used by several during the recent committee hearings, including by Facebook employees for example. So it will effectively enshrine in law: shadow banning, delisting from Google search etc. Also enshrined in the legislation is the principle of banning content which is 'legal but harmful to adults'. 'Harmful', amongst many other terms, is not defined. Also enshrined in law will be the principle that certain types of 'journalistic' content will be protected from this censorship if it meets criteria to be decided upon by the new regulator, Ofcom. This will be an enabling act. It is full, from front to back, of opportunity for scope creep through secondary legislation. As I said, the UK is leading the charge with this, but the EU has been keeping pace [1]. I haven't seen similar in the US as of yet. [0] - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-online-safe...
[1] - https://ec.europa.eu/info/digital-services-act-ensuring-safe... |
The root cause of this is that our society has forgotten how to argue for free speech as a moral case. We've taken it for granted for so long, we can't remember why it's good. Meanwhile the enemies of it have spent years steadily attacking it, often with lies (e.g. the numerous fake claims of Twitter bots controlling elections).