Post 5: Net Neutrality, Deplatforming, and Echo Chambers

Net Neutrality

Net neutrality, which is sometimes called Internet Freedom, is the idea that all websites should be treated the same by internet service providers (ISPs). In a world where net neutrality rules are eliminated, ISPs gain the power to block certain websites and services. In 2017 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to do just this and eliminate net neutrality rules. After the FCC made this decision a big debate about net neutrality began and many stakeholders got involved. Some of these stakeholders have already been mentioned, but the main groups concerned with this issue are; ISPs, the government and government officials, advocacy groups, organizations using the internet to deliver their content, and consumer / users of the internet. Each of these stakeholders has very different beliefs and stances on the issue. First of all, as briefly mentioned, most ISPs are anti-net neutrality and believe that laws to regulate net neutrality should be put in place. The reason the ISPs believe this is because adding these laws puts them, and the government, in full control of the internet. ISPs recently have been feeling threatened by individual users and startups that are using the internet to supply the same services they do for much cheaper. Users are turning to services such as Skype and Netflix and are relying on these providers instead of purchasing packages from the ISPs. Due to this, ISPs are losing customers and profit, and they view net neutrality regulation as a good way to start solving this problem. Taking a similar stance as the ISPs, the government is also for net neutrality regulation. In this case, however, it is because the government believes in protecting the people and feels that the best way to do this is to take back control of the internet. The government believes that by exercising its authority in this debate, it will be able to increase competition and protect consumer rights. Unlike the ISPs and the government, advocacy groups support net neutrality and are against its regulation. These groups believe that net neutrality, or in essence a free and open internet, promotes freedom of speech, equitable access to information, innovation and the reduction of discrepancies in pricing policies and believe that by regulating net neutrality all of these will be impacted negatively. Organizations that use the internet to deliver their content have similar concerns. These companies are the ones that the ISPs are losing customers to and the ISPs want to stop them by regulating net neutrality. Therefore, it is pretty clear that these content providers are against net neutrality regulation. By giving the control to the ISPs, many of these organizations would go out of business because the ISPs would have the power to block or replace their services. This very reason is one why most consumers are also against the regulation of net neutrality. By giving the ISPs the power users will no longer have as much freedom when it comes to choosing what services they use and pay for. Many users believe that net neutrality regulation will take away all of the freedom and individuality that makes the internet what it is. While this listing creates a good summary of the problem, it is important to keep in mind that net neutrality, and the positions and beliefs of the groups who take stake in this issue, are hard to summarize and thus should be taken with a grain of salt.

Deplatforming

There are various arguments against the act of deplatforming public speakers. Deplatforming shields students away from important aspects of reality in the world. This makes them poorly equipped to deal with oppressive ideas that are publicly expressed, especially the most extreme oppressive ideas that by time to time you encounter outside of the college environment. Topics such as racism, homophobia and xenophobia are real issues which students should be exposed to. Another argument opposing deplatforming is that university campuses should be areas that are neutral with respect to ideas. Just like universities are open to people from all backgrounds and religions, they should also be open to people that believe in different things. Deplatforming them removes their ability to express them and in a sense is an attack on their freedom of speech, which is something that this country is built on. Deplatforming also causes divisions among students since those who support the visiting speaker will have the feeling that their viewpoints are being shut down by the majority. This is a major issue since is marginalises a portion of the student body, which is the last thing that a welcoming community such as universities seek to do. Finally, the same tactics that can be used to repress hate speech can be used against speech that is just unpopular or threatening to people. Right now, deplatforming may shut down speech that you don’t like, but tomorrow it might threaten speech that you do.

Just like there are arguments against deplatforming, there are also strong arguments for it. Firstly, the deplatforming policy operates to protect students from vilification, hatred and radicalization. It has been proven that your surroundings influence actions and your mentality, and therefore, being exposed to hate speech and extremist ideology could sway them to believe in these views. This would be extremely detrimental as these ideologies could quickly spread in a college campus. Another argument for deplatforming is that universities should be models for civil discourse. Ideas which fall outside of the norms of proper civil discourse should be excluded from it. It is improper to talk about extreme views in public, and therefore why should universities allow such speech to run free on their campuses? Hate speech is a dangerous thing that should not be promoted or even given a platform, especially around young adults which are still forming their own opinions on many topics about the world. Finally, providing resources to people who promote dangerous topics such as racism, xenophobia and homophobia is a tacit legitimisation of their views. It is an act that promotes the same hate speech that they are preaching. Although some may see removing this voice as a removal of free speech, others see it as a way to counterbalance power asymmetries.

Deplatforming has proven to be a very controversial, yet very important issue, over the past few years due to the overwhelming growth of social media. With this overwhelming growth has come an overwhelming amount of negativity, toxicity, and hate speech being circulated around social media. From the standpoint of our Epicurean ethical framework, we believe that deplatforming, while it may take away the freedom of speech of some individuals, is a sometimes necessary and overall beneficial course of action.

When deplatforming is deemed necessary, it is most often used towards individuals, or groups of individuals, that spread some form of radical speech or hate speech, or promote some sort of violence towards groups of people. One of the primary emphases of the Epicurean framework of ethics is the overall effect, or consequence, of an action on other people. Allowing hate speech or radicalization to be spread throughout social media or a significant news source can have a dangerously negative effect on the people who consume that media. Not only does it specifically attack groups of people and seriously offend or frighten them, but it could also convince other people towards this toxic mindset, and only continue to make the problem worse. While it comes at the cost of some people’s freedom of speech, if deplatforming a person has a much larger positive effect in the grand scheme of things, then the Epicurean framework of ethics would fully support that action.

Another consideration of the Epicurean framework is to eliminate unnecessary desires. For the people who enjoyed consuming the content of a controversial personality such as Alex Jones would consider this content a desire. However, because this content can have such a strong negative effect, as discussed earlier, the Epicurean framework of ethics would consider this content an “unnecessary desire”. So, since the Epicurean framework is always seeking to eliminate unnecessary desires, we would certainly decide to deplatform that person.

Finally, the Epicurean framework of ethics places a large emphasis on friendships. In other words, anyone who follows the Epicurean code of ethics should always be concerned with the consequences of their actions not only on themselves, but, more importantly, how their actions affect other people. While a person may decide that consuming and spreading the controversial content of a person like Alex Jones may bring them pleasure and does not have any negative consequences on themselves, it is almost certain that this content is going to have a negative effect on that person’s friends. Therefore, the Epicurean framework of ethics would clearly not support spreading that content, and as a result would move to deplatform that person.

Echo Chambers

An echo chamber is an environment, often online, in which users find their own opinions repeated back at them, reinforcing the belief system shared by the users. “Tunnel vision” is a phrase that aptly describes the danger of such a community. As a metaphor, this means that one is wary of considering ideas that conflict with his or her predominant belief system. One solution is seeing alternative ideas; however, by definition, echo chambers do not have ideas that challenge preexisting biases. Thus ideas, especially controversial or toxic ones, manage to circulate and spread and become normalized, while in the pre-internet era these ideas would be relegated to small geographic areas or smothered to the point of irrelevance by prevailing societal norms.

In recent culture, online social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit have garnered criticism for providing platforms to develop echo chambers. Brexit, the 2016 Trump election, and Russian election interference via manipulation of echo chambers are major events of scrutiny in which echo chambers have been linked. It is important to note that there is a phenomenon called the “filter bubble,” which has ties to the dangers of echo chambers but is not the same. In a filter bubble, algorithms present information conforming to what the user believes to personalize the experience, whereas echo chambers have ideas introduced by the social community.

With many echo chambers reinforcing controversial, toxic, or hateful speech, a concept known has “deplatforming” has cropped up. Deplatforming occurs when the host of the community drops the community and stops supporting a group due to their ideas or actions. Whether a company does this for moral reasons or for public relations reasons (that is, deplatforming to stop negative attention against the company for hosting the group or doing so as a show of goodwill to a target demographic) is not the subject of this post.

According to the Mashable article, the following groups were deplatformed in 2018. First, Alex Jones and InfoWars were deplatformed for hate speech, harassment, and spreading conspiracies. The line was crossed when Jones called the Sandy Hook shooting a hoax and his followers harassed the family. Most media platforms stopped supporting the group and forced them onto their own website, significantly reducing the amount of new traffic they received. Second, the Proud Boys, a group founded by Gavin McInnes that promotes political violence in defense of the “white Western man” was deplatformed by Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as a response to the group’s violent actions. Third, the social media site Gab was dropped by their host company, domain provider, and payment processors after it was revealed that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers maintained an anti-Semitic account on the site. Fourth, Reddit dropped subreddits with hate speech in 2015, and “decreased the amount of hate speech on the platform overall”. The amount of hate speech is not defined in the article, and it does not define what hate speech was dropped. Fifth, Milo Yiannopoulos, an alt-right journalist, was banned from Twitter for participating in a racial harassment campaign and lost his journalism job and book deal due to comments seemingly defending pedophilia. Finally, according to the company Cloudflare, the Daily Stormer, an anti-semite, white supremacy, neo-Nazi website, was deplatformed by host Cloudflare after the Daily Stormer claimed Cloudflare supported their agenda. The company formerly supported the site because they argued that regulating content should not occur at the proxy, where Cloudflare provides their service, and even mentioned requests of denying vigilante justice from hackers; after the Daily Stormer’s claims, Cloudflare cited due process and transparency in their decision to stop support.

Epicureanism would likely approve of deplatforming as long as it followed a just process and not used as a tool for stifling speech. Namely, it should only be used as a tool against toxic communities, not all echo chambers. Epicurus would argue that justice, as an agreement not to harm others, supports laws and punishments to defend others from harm such that they can pursue their own happiness. Deplatforming is one such punishment for those who advocate hateful or violent behavior against others.

An argument against Epicurean deplatforming is that of the happiness of the deplatformed group; however, if the deplatformed group is engaging in behavior inhibiting the happiness of others, then it is a just response. Another argument against deplatforming is the precedent it sets against free speech. However, though the punishment would require careful moderation, it should be fine because true Epicurists would not abuse deplatforming against communities they simply disliked because it would inhibit the victim’s happiness.

Epicurean deplatforming therefore would have an effect on toxic echo chambers, but not all echo chambers. It would not support hate speech out of free speech principles, but on the effect the community has on other people’s ability to pursue happiness. The issue with the toxic echo chambers discussed is that they thrive off of offending people’s sensibilities, or by claiming offense in order to provoke an irrational call to action. There is no dialogue – there is just extremism. I could see Epicureanism letting some echo chambers exist, provided they did not harm others (after all, certain fandoms are echo chambers espousing their chosen fictional works), but as soon as a community turned vitriolic against other groups, it crosses a line. Groups that perpetuate opinions that may be hateful to some but without making calls to action are a bit more difficult to classify, but I would argue that an Epicurist could audit the group and judge if the ideas were developed enough to incite action of if they were promoted by a sparse group and just as likely to fizzle out. For example, a community that hates machine learning / AI might commiserate about the technology and its potential future impact, and this would probably be fine in its own isolation, but if this ever turns against researchers it would be cause for alarm. The former community is an echo chamber, but the latter community is a toxic echo chamber.