A New Threat to Online Speech?

Flemming RoseThere seems to be a growing consensus among legal experts and free speech activists that international human rights law (IHR) should provide the framework for social media ’s content moderation. In anew essay titled “But Facebook’s Not a Country, ” Dangerous Speech Project founder Susan Benesch joins this growing chorus.What is IHR? It is a modern phenomena. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is considered its foundational document. It was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. It has provided the basis for a set of treaties, covenants and conventions signed by UN member states, though governments often exempt themselves from specific obligations. They are intended to promote human rights across borders and create a framework of rules, norms, and standards accepted in relations between sovereign states, free and unfree, democratic and authoritarian.In our context, the relevant international treaties are the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), though I will focus mainly on the ICERD. Benesch acknowledges that the ICERD ’s proscriptions “seem[s] considerably broader than the ICCPR’s hate speech provisions” because it requires “the prohibition of different, and likely much more, speech.”Indeed, the ICERD ’s Article 4 calls for the criminalization of “(D)issemination o...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs