(2017-08-28) Mann A Handful Of Tech Companies Decide Who Has Free Speech Online Thats Not Good

Sonya Mann: A Handful of Tech Companies Decide Who Has Free Speech Online. That's Not Good.

On Aug. 18, statistics professor and researcher Salil Mehta discovered that his Google account had been shut down. Not only did he lose access to his email, but his popular blog Statistical Ideas was inaccessible -- right after The New York Times had linked to it, directing a stream of readers his way. Google's automated message told Mehta that he had violated the Terms of Service, but didn't specify how and offered little recourse.

Mehta's experience with Google illustrates just how little some of us trust our digital gatekeepers. Anyone who is right of center -- or otherwise holds views that don't jibe with the dominant Silicon Valley paradigm -- can't help but feel antsy in 2017.

Your whole life could be tied up in an account, and then a fluke mistake could get you banned

Tech companies that offer free consumer products get away with promising very little to their users. Due process is not part of the deal.

Sometimes the affectation is broken. Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince caused a stir when he reversed the company's policy of content neutrality in order to ax a neo-Nazi (Right-Wing) site.

Conservative writer David French critiqued Prince's decision in the National Review, and came to the same conclusion:

This was an ominous development for free speech -- and not because there is anything at all valuable about The Daily Stormer's message. It's an evil site. Its message is vile. Instead, The Daily Stormer's demise is a reminder that a few major corporations now have far more power than the government to regulate and restrict free speech, and they're hardly neutral or unbiased actors. They have a point of view, and they're under immense pressure to use that point of view to influence public debate.

Everyone is on edge. Even rote decisions made by algorithms -- like the one that booted Salil Mehta from his Google account -- are easy to interpret as ideology-driven malice. In most cases, users are disenfranchised to the extent that they'll never find out either way.