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The Westminster Declaration: “Open discourse is the central pillar of a free society”
re: free speech
re: Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald and Michael Schellenberger
In an era of massive censorship via fascist* government actions, such things are sorely needed. Will they stem the tide? Probably not, but Elon Musk is taking it seriously, so there is hope.
The Westminster Declaration: “Open discourse is the central pillar of a free society”
We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms.
Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms.
This abuse of these terms has resulted in the censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries all over the world.
Such interference with the right to free speech suppresses valid discussion about matters of urgent public interest, and undermines the foundational principles of representative democracy.
Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’
...As the Twitter Files revealed, tech companies often perform censorial ‘content moderation’ in coordination with government agencies and civil society. Soon, the European Union’s Digital Services Act will formalise this relationship by giving platform data to ‘vetted researchers’ from NGOs and academia, relegating our speech rights to the discretion of these unelected and unaccountable entities....
... Some politicians and NGOs[9] are even aiming to target end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram.[10] If end-to-end encryption is broken, we will have no remaining avenues for authentic private conversations in the digital sphere...
...The attack on speech is not just about distorted rules and regulations – it is a crisis of humanity itself. Every equality and justice campaign in history has relied on an open forum to voice dissent. In countless examples, including the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement, social progress has depended on freedom of expression...
WIND: the only free speech that matters (or exists!) is speech that offends someone or some entity. All other speech needs no protection. The ludicrous thing is that children and idiots talk about free speech as if it only applies to non-offensive speech, precisely where it is wholly irrelevant.
Free speech is not just the right to “speak”, but the right of others to listen. That part is often forgotten.
Also, it might have been a good argument 20 years ago that free speech was only a hold on the government (US constitution), but in today’s social media environment, that’s an argument for children and idiots given the massive governmental coercion and fascist* control in numerous ways over “private” companies.
* In the correct sense of the word: de facto government influence/control over private companies, through both direct as well as numerous indirect forms of coercion of many kinds.
