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In the early days of the Internet revolution, the World Wide Web was touted as being the harbinger of unparalleled growth in free speech. Suddenly, everyone and their uncle could publish their thoughts. All they needed was an Internet connection.

No longer were news and media controlled by a few large media companies. A proliferation of “new” media quickly made traditional media less relevant, or even irrelevant. Most under-30s today don’t read newspapers or watch television. And in this wild, new world – everybody has a voice, and can say what they want. What’s more, your voice can now be heard in remote Alaska or anywhere in the world – not just in your bathroom!

Proponents of democracy and free speech loved this. We believed that this meant growth of democracy and accountability for rulers and others in power.

Alas! This promise has been short-lived.

Rulers everywhere realised that the anarchic nature of the web posed threats not only to them, but to peace and stability. The “free” speech was further exploited by those who wanted to push their agendas, and many of these new channels are fundamentally subversive, divisive or promote hatred.

In fact, Internet freedom has been abused to such an extent that it is common to find extreme hate speech and exhortations to violence on social media. Add to that, fake news – where doctored videos have been used to instigate people to violence. You can even find information on how to commit every type of crime that you can think of (and those that you never even imagined).

Naturally, governments have clamped down on some of these freedoms. And not just in China or relatively autocratic regimes, this censorship is evident in democratic countries too. In recent years, the EU, the UK, Singapore, Australia, Germany and India have enacted regulations that allow governments to force take-downs of objectionable content. And this will likely intensify, given that current laws are still inadequate.

Such legislation everywhere gives greater power to governments, and will be abused to target genuine dissenters or political opponents. This is inevitable, and we still haven’t figured out how to embed checks and balances.

More than just governments, powerful social media giants like Facebook, X, YouTube, Tiktok, etc. can and do decide what to censor and what to promote. And their algorithms are designed to promote not only their political views, but also divisive or controversial posts. After all, outrage, criticism and rants attract more views, shares, likes and followers. These random statistics appear to be all that matter in this mad, new world.

Any group of individuals can now “troll” a content creator, send them hate speech, threaten them, hack their accounts, shame and “cancel” them. This pressure can be immense and scary, and often more powerful than government action. And the worst is that every reasonably organised grouping is now doing this. You cannot disagree with wokes, or rightists, or leftists, or dog lovers, or pigeon feeders, or any leader, or community or religion, or anybody at all – unless you want to face a barrage of hate.

Users of social media are incentivised to mock, ridicule, shame, or display anger at others’ posts. After all, this makes them more popular and influential. Essentially, the flow of information is being gamified to encourage rants versus genuine debate. Nobody goes viral for being calm and reasonable.

This is a new form of censorship – for the people, by the people and of the people; and amplified by the algorithm. There are no rules that establish what is allowed or not. It is simply left to the mob. Any motivated group is free to attack you online, and you have to either lump it – or stop expressing your opinion freely.

So is the Internet killing freedom of speech?

Would love your views. 

And regardless of whether you agree or disagree with me, don’t worry – I won’t cancel you!