The French government and U.S. tech giants are pushing for a worldwide initiative to regulate the internet — including the issue of hate speech.
The new declaration from the French government titled the “Paris Call For Trust and Security in Cyberspace,” is part of an international effort to crack down on cyber attacks, foreign interference, and hate speech, according to the organization that drafted the document. American big tech companies such as Facebook and Alphabet’s Google have offered their support, willing to promote this regulation as a demonstration of their company values.
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The group Access Now, which helped draft this “Paris Call,” said in a statement on Monday, November 12, that it could help counter the actions of nations that defend their sovereignty. The organization said,
“Sovereignty can justify overbroad data collection and government hacking, Internet shutdowns, restrictions on expression based on poorly defined standards of hate speech or terrorist content, and limits on the security of platforms, all in the name of the needs of the state.Ultimately, the Paris Call will reinforce other efforts to improve protections for users and their rights.”
“Hate speech” is all too often designated by liberally biased tech companies as conservative speech that undermines their politically correct liberal narratives. The Media Research Center created a Special Report that noted how tech firms acted as censors that enabled far-left arbiters like the ADL and SPLC to “treat standard conservative beliefs in faith and family as examples of [hatred]” or let "Anti-Conservative Fact Checkers” determine what is or isn't "fake news.”
Facebook has also famously worked with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel to censor “hate speech” online. She has often been accused of censoring genuine critiques of Germany’s migrant crisis.
Facebook has even been overzealous in this task to the point German courts have stepped in to prevent criticism from being censored. One such case was when Facebook removed a post by a German man commenting, "Germans are getting increasingly stupid. No wonder, since the left-wing system media litters them every day with fake news about ’skilled workers,’ declining unemployment figures or Trump" beneath a Facebook post, until a court order had it restored.
Even Jason Pontin, a former free speech advocate who was heavily cited in a recently leaked Google private memo, has admitted that social media companies are poor judges when it comes to making the distinction between genuinely dangerous hate speech and views they find personally offensive, “[Social media companies] should’ve been able to articulate a principle-based approach that was fairly applied to everyone, regardless of their political viewpoints… but they’ve really failed to do so... And as revelations have come out, they’ve come to seem not only inconsistent, but misguided and sometimes actively dishonest.”
According to Cyberscoop, Google and Cisco were two of the major tech companies who are supporting this initiative. Nicklas Lundblad, a Google vice president, stated publicly that, “We support the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace because as security threats evolve, continuous collaboration with the industry and with governments is the best way to protect users and help create a more secure internet for everyone.”
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The same big tech companies that are wary of being regulated by the U.S. government in order to protect free speech, will gladly volunteer to be regulated by foreign governments so that they can restrict free speech. According to The Telegraph, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft already appear to be on board with this resolution, but the United States, Russia, and China have each refused to sign this agreement, dealing it a major blow.
