"What to Do About the Emerging Threat of Censorship Creep on the Internet", substantial position paper at Cato

Cato Institute has a long paper by Danielle Keats Citron, “What to Do About the Emerging Threat of Censorship Creep on the Internet”, link here. This may very well have been printed as a Policy Paper.   Citron is the author of “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace”.

   

The paper notes that major content companies, especially social networking platforms, have to adjust their practices to European law which is often stricter on expectations of prior restraint and on specific group-oriented concerns over hate speech than American law. This concern appears in areas like “the right to be forgotten”.  On the other hand, this might give tech companies a heads up if American law loosens Section 230 protections (as over Backpage) although European law does have some due process in downstream liability cases.  

  

European politicians have extracted concessions from tech companies by threatening to hold them liable for extremist speech. But Europe really is in a hypocritical quandary over handling especially radical Islam.