regulation, good practice and censorship

What kinds of questions does it raise about the internet and freedom of speech?

• The internet allows for more freedom of speech due to the likelihood of no consequences and the anonymity of the speech. 

Where do you stand on this issue?

• I believe people should have the freedom to say whatever they like but they should be prepared to deal with the consequences of their words and research the topic a bit before making comments on it.

Freedom of speech (online) 
Tommy advocates (problematic)
Uses to back up his opinions
He is a member of a movement (EDL) with specific racist views

Consequences of unlimited freedom
Used irresponsibly to communicate racist or other extreme views of minorities
Can't use freedom of speech to be racist

Regulating the internet- what can the government do?
Self-governance (self-checking)- YouTube

Published a transparency report- take content down
Facebook- owns Instagram- both give warnings to audiences; regulate platforms- 'filters' and 'warnings'

Regulation
There is no standard regulation or regulatory body to monitor social media. However, private businesses cannot break the Data Protection act (by, for example, publishing clients' personal details without permission).

Case study- Cambridge Analytica 2019

• Facebook was taken to court and Mark Zuckerberg had to answer questions when it was revealed in the UK parliament that the personal details of Facebook users were used to feed them false information to influence them with regard to two major political issues: UK and Brexit and the elections in the US (Trump's campaign)
• Data for around 87 million Facebook users were involved in this scandal.

Equally, hate speech is covered by law, and this applies to social media. 
Hate speech includes:

• racism
• homophobia
• sexism
• xenophobia
• islamophobia
• antisemitism

North Korea censorship
What are the main issues?
No privacy- phones and internet use are controlled by the government by controlled by government and surveillance.

Surveillance- monitoring of individual's phone and internet use ( no freedom, no liberty, no democracy)

(Internal) 'intranet' access to 'information' within the parameters of North Korea rather than an internet 

Propaganda, not info- Bias information used to manipulate people into agreeing with your views

China has strict firewalls to prevent potential subversion of its regime. Some internet searches are banned, and social media currently blocked in the country include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Gmail, and YouTube.

China has its own social media platforms- Weibo (most popular)

Bias and ideology

Marxist pyramid

Gatekeepers- control the flow of information from the ruling classes (the superstructure) to the proletariat (base structure). This creates the potential for bias. It exists in every society.

Social media- how can governments regulate it
Article: Notes

The government has proposed regulating social media through fines and blocking services for those who break the rules. 

Employ people to monitor and remove content

Self-governance

Germany implemented a fining system but there were complaints that the offensive content still hadn't been taken down