Freedom of Speech

Baroness D'Souza Excerpts

Friday 10th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness D’Souza (CB)]

My Lords, we all agree that free speech is one of the most important of our individual rights and, some would argue, the cornerstone of democracy. However, it is increasingly hijacked by social media platforms to spread sensation, hate and disinformation, and by the so-called woke community to prevent views other than its own being expressed. The issue is how to balance much-needed regulation with the protection of free speech.

It is reliably reported that large sums of foreign money were invested in recent US and UK elections, as well as in the EU referendum. In 2019, political parties or leaders in some 45 democratic countries used computer propaganda tools to amass fake voter support, and a further 26 authoritarian states used social networks to control and/or supress public opinion and media freedoms.

Democratic public discourse is threatened by disinformation. It diminishes the quality of democracy by fostering confusion and disbelief. It distorts the electoral process, resulting in electoral instability, and limits the freedom of the individual to make informed choices and exercise their political rights. It encourages dangerous polarisation, making it easy to just tap into one’s preference, and it drowns out opinions that run counter to the prevailing wisdom. It was, after all, John Stuart Mill who said that Victorian liberalism would be destroyed by the conformity imposed by public opinion. We need dissident voices, unpopular views and robust debate but we absolutely do not need vicious trolling, often contributing to loss of employment and immense personal distress.

However, regulation is a tricky area and open to abuse by those who seek to control information. In 2019, a Russia-led and China-backed UN resolution on combating cybercrime by controlling information and supressing political dissidence was passed, despite opposition from several major western powers. Many would, for these reasons, rule out legal restrictions.

There is intense discussion at the moment in the context of the draft Online Safety Bill to find guaranteed safeguards, such as a statutory duty of care on the part of social media companies. It is hoped that self-regulation will itself become a market force as more people turn away from those sites that spread hate and disinformation. It is, perhaps, a vain hope, but it is a hope nevertheless. A proper code of practice on misinformation and annual reports from social media platforms on what content has been removed in other jurisdictions would inform the user about the degree of authoritarianism in other nations. It is also suggested that there be a Joint Committee in Parliament to consider the regulation of the digital environment and proper monitoring of compliance.

However, these mechanisms will prove effective only if the public are actively involved—for example, enabling choice as to which platforms to use, such as those that have verified their identity, or limiting any one platform from being the default search engine on mobile phones. Digital citizenship and media literacy at early school levels, kitemarks for responsible platforms and the sharing of best practice models would together create a culture of much-needed public and individual responsibility.

Finally, civil society has an important role to play. For example, Full Fact—an organisation that will be familiar to many noble Lords—is one of the first of a growing number of independent organisations whose sole purpose is to expose disinformation by forensically examining false claims and political coercion. The US civil society organisation Blackbird has identified a Twitter campaign in the US whose goal is to delegitimise the Democratic Party because of its early warnings on Covid. Increasingly devious mechanisms are constantly being uncovered and Parliaments around the world have a duty to monitor these threats and act, preferably at the international level.