President Egils Levits is just as forbidden on Facebook as naked girls and hate speech

Censorship is constitutionally prohibited in all democracies, but it does not cover things like incitement to ethnic and racial hatred, support for terrorism, child pornography. Laws are devoted to the description and prohibition of these things. The law also regulates the field of copyright, which prohibits the use of another author's works for profit without permission.

To that extent, everything is understandable and logical. However, nowadays the proportions of what is allowed and what is forbidden in the Internet environment are slowly growing in favor of all kinds of bans and their list is getting longer.

Zuckerberg to the floor

The turning point came in April 2018, when Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook defended before the US Congress for improperly transferring data from 87 million users to political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, who worked with Donald Trump's campaign during the 2016 US elections. He said that Facebook had not sufficiently protected the platform and said that "that goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy". He promised to be good and not to do such things anymore. At that time, other Internet platforms that do not want to be called on the floor also got scared. The time has not yet come for new technology professionals, programmers, webmasters and hackers to be more politically influential than "traditional politicians". It will come, but not yet. Therefore, Zuckerberg still had to stand before politicians, not the other way around.

Trump is trying to counter censorship

During the last US presidential election campaign, the social network Twitter thought it could slightly censor the US President Donald Trump himself, adding to his statements that the tweet does not correspond to the facts and so forth. This provoked a sharp backlash from Trump, and he even signed an order against censorship on social media. "Free speech is the bedrock of American democracy. Our Founding Fathers protected this sacred right with the First Amendment to the Constitution. The freedom to express and debate ideas is the foundation for all of our rights as a free people.

The growth of online platforms in recent years raises important questions about applying the ideals of the First Amendment to modern communications technology. Today, many Americans follow the news, stay in touch with friends and family, and share their views on current events through social media and other online platforms. As a result, these platforms function in many ways as a 21st century equivalent of the public square.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power to shape the interpretation of public events; to censor, delete, or disappear information; and to control what people see or do not see.

As President, I have made clear my commitment to free and open debate on the internet. Such debate is just as important online as it is in our universities, our town halls, and our homes. It is essential to sustaining our democracy."

The US president called this censorship one of the greatest threats in U.S. history.

There can be many opinions on Trump, he will soon hand over the presidency, but the problem he touched on is serious, and it is a challenge not only for America, but also for Europe and Latvia. Censorship is disgusting, a threat to democracy, rights and freedom. If the ban on publishing material is not justified by the need to protect the public from terrorists or pedophiles, it is not permissible.

Facebook is afraid of everything

But there is a nuance here - Facebook, Twitter and other sites are private offices. They each have their own approach to attracting more people and advertisers without getting under the magnifying glass of law enforcement and special services. For example, Facebook's Terms of Use are different from other sites and search tools. Facebook is hysterically afraid of everything - from pictures of women with naked breasts, to pictures that seem to indicate violence. For example, it is strictly forbidden to publish a photo from the 1969 Woodstock Festival, in which a half-naked girl sits on the shoulders of a boy and in the background the whole panorama of the grand festival with half a million spectators can be seen. Her breasts are bare, but they have long hair over them - the nipples are difficult to see there. This image has previously been published in countless books and Internet resources, but is being blocked on Facebook for some incomprehensible moral reasons. In addition, its publication is not only forbidden, but is subject to penalties - the publishers of this image are warned or their access to the site is temporarily blocked.

Also, pictures that point to something that could upset an individual with a weak nervous system are often forbidden - for example, a very illustrative and distant image of a running, burning person.

In such cases, there is no possibility to complain, to appeal, because the wrong photos are selected and blocked by artificial intelligence - if an image has already been complained about by citizens and a moderator has included them as censorable, the system bans them and does not enter into discussions with site users. It is impossible to argue with a bot.

Army of moderators (censors)

There are also the so-called hate speeches. It's hard to imagine how this happens, but it is probably the case that there are computer programs in different languages ​​that highlight key words and word combinations that may indicate terrorism, hate speech, or the like. But it’s impossible to do this without a human presence. That's why social networks hire a huge number of moderators who come from different nations and know the languages ​​of different countries. Arabic is supposed to be in high demand, but others do not lack either. This is a huge amount of work, as there are complaints from all over the world about some social network users who have actually or seemingly made hate speech. They must either be accepted as permissible or deleted by sending warnings to the authors, temporarily denying access to Facebook or, in severe cases, permanently. I know some passionate debaters who have had to sit without access to Facebook dozens of times - sometimes even for a month. Although it cannot be said that what they had said was criminal. It has been a very sharp, militant view, but not a direct incitement to hatred.

A documentary on Facebook was recently shown on television about a moderator center in Dublin. It was estimated that the company employs 20 thousand moderators. But this film is no longer very fresh. Presumably, there are many more such moderators.

Zuckerberg to the floor

Unfortunately, the panic that political battles caused during the 2018 and subsequent US elections has led Facebook to not only take care not to interfere in the US election process, but to start interfering in other countries' election processes. This has sometimes been the case in Latvia as well. At least three Latvian political parties have suffered from the strange actions of social networks in one way or another. At one time, one of the Harmony (Saskaņa) pages on the Facebook site was removed. In April of this year, the National Alliance’s (Nacionālā apvienība) platform on the microblogging site Twitter was temporarily blocked for some alleged violations of the rules. Soon it was unblocked again. In turn, the Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un Zemnieku Savienība) was denied the opportunity to sponsor (boost) their own campaign materials. Why would it be bad if a party chooses the internet to gain more penetration by paying a little money to get the message across to a larger audience? If these amounts are reported to Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB), then everything should be in a transparent order. But Facebook has demanded special rules for registering political pages, and the party has been harassed in every way until it has gotten through some of its publications.

Baltic Ministry of Truth

There is a thing called the Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism Re:Baltica, which calls itself a non-profit non-governmental organization that deals with investigative journalism in the public interest. The face of this organization is Inga Spriņģe. In Re:Baltica a currently topical issue is about domestic violence, which is nice. Be that as it may. However, Re:Baltica has now taken on the role of truth-teller in the final instance. The organization monitors whether the facts expressed in the media are true, which would also be nice. Indeed, many different lies and nonsense appear on the Internet every day.

However, Spriņģe has not hidden and is proud of her visits to American social network offices. And reported on cooperation with these offices. I would like to hope that she does not use her good connections to manipulate Latvia's domestic politics. Hopefully, she hasn't complained about any "bad" Facebook profiles and pages. That would not be appropriate. It would then seem as if Re:Baltica becomes like a Chekist-censors office on the 18th floor of the Press House.

Facebook is also afraid of Levits

Neatkarīgā recently interviewed the country's highest official, President Egils Levits. The interview was meaningful. Neatkarīgā’s interviews and comments are also translated into English. The idea was to run this interview more widely with a little sponsorship so that it can also be read in Lithuania and Estonia. But how did that turn out? Facebook rejected this material. It turns out that Egils Levits is something to be censored, forbidden, just like naked girls, terrorism or incitement to racial unrest... It is hard to imagine a greater absurdity. This is happening at the same time as, for example, Russia's scariest propaganda bodies are polluting Facebook space with no restraint. Meanwhile, the Latvian media cannot promote an interview with its president in neighboring countries? What could have created such an incomprehensible nightmare? Hard to judge. Maybe the artificial robot that threw back the material with the keyword "president" intervened? It is to be hoped that this misunderstanding will be clarified and we will find some common language with Facebook. The interview is still more or less relevant. But very soon it will no longer be relevant. However, we still want for people in in Lithuania and Estonia to be able to read the interview with Levits.