EU agreement threatens freedom of religion and freedom of the press by censoring critical internet posts

Jun 9, 2016 by

from Barnabas Fund:

The EU has just announced an agreement with major internet providers such as Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft under which material deemed to be “hate speech” will be removed from the internet within 24 hours. However, we have serious concerns that the definition of hate speech is so vague it could effectively censor anything deemed politically incorrect, including for example, any criticism of Islamism, mass migration or even the European Union itself.  This could have serious implications for Christian organisations such as Barnabas Fund which are reporting on the persecution of Christians, such as converts from Islam.

The new code of conduct has been criticised by some members of the European parliament as “Orwellian” (a reference to the George Orwell’s novel 1984 written shortly after WW2 which describes a future world where people’s lives are closely watched and controlled by the state, which even seeks to enforce an invented language called “Newspeak” to prevent political dissent by eliminating all words related to it).

The code of conduct which was announced on 31st May commits IT companies to work with what it terms ‘civil society organisations’ to flag and remove comments deemed offensive within 24 hours. TheNational Secular Society has warned that the agreement between the EU and IT companies risks censoring any critical discussion of Islam:

“Far from tackling online ‘cyber jihad,’ the agreement risks having the exact opposite effect and entrapping any critical discussion of religion under vague ‘hate speech’ rules. Poorly-trained Facebook or Twitter staff, perhaps with their own ideological bias, could easily see heated criticism of Islam and think it is ‘hate speech,’ particularly if pages or users are targeted and mass reported by Islamists.”

Read here

Read also:  The Facebook story you didn’t hear by Jane Clark Scharl, National Review

 

 

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