A New Podcast on Free Speech: Many Victories, Many Struggles

In 1996 John Perry Barlow pennedA Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, a radical call for complete online freedom. The document begins with an optimistic word of caution for states the world around; “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us.”The internet did not develop as Barlow had hoped, as Jacob Mchangama illustrates in the latest episode of his podcast,Clear and Present Danger: A History of Free Speech.He notes that the “digital promised land turned into a dystopia of surveillance, disinformation, trolling and hate, to which governments responded with increasingly draconian measures.” China has simply banned foreign social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, while inside the “great firewall,” the gov ernment manipulates its population’s infoscape through a combination of flooding popular sites with positive comments and the prohibition of specific characters. Elsewhere, states pressure social media companies to establish sophisticated censorship mechanisms with threats of regulation and liabil ity imposition. “The Great Disruption: Part I,” interrogates the claim that the disruptive effects of the internet and social media on the spread of information are historically unprecedented. In some ways, of course, the internet’s effects are unparalleled. But throughout ...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 6, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: John Samples Source Type: blogs