Re: [Pearg] descriptive censorship work: draft-hall-censorship-tech

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

> Il 19 maggio 2019 03:37 Amelia Andersdotter <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
> 
> To be fair, Facebook faces fines in the order of tens of millions of
> euros if they fail to block something they should have blocked.
> Over-blocking has indeed been a persistent concern among those groups
> who have argued that blocking is not a good solution to any particular
> content moderation problem.

It's true that, in the end, most independent blocking decisions by private companies derive from the fear of legal trouble, which by definition derives from a law and thus from a political/governmental decision. So I see why you could argue that most private censorship still indirectly derives from governmental pressure (the other big case I see is that of pro-intellectual-property upload filters, which until a couple of months ago were not legally mandated, but were privately adopted to avoid potential litigation with copyright owners; but one could say that this was still a consequence of a legal framework biased in favour of protecting commercial IP rights).

There are however a few cases in which it's quite hard to establish this connection; think for example of the Google Shopping case[1], which IMHO is indeed a form of private censorship. This does not derive from indirect legal pressure - on the contrary, it was ruled as illegal - but only comes as a consequence of private business interests.

In the end, I am really afraid of a future in which more and more censoring power is in the hands of private companies, so I would like the draft to cover that as well.

Ciao,


[1] https://www.beuc.eu/blog/how-google-is-eroding-consumers-freedom-to-choose/
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Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
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