Rumors on the Net: A Brackish Suspension of Speech and Hate

1. The Operating Strategy of the Wild Web

Popular media has called much of accepted history into question by challenging public memory. For example, there are those who say the Holocaust never happened; there are those who challenge the validity of sexual assault claims whether in the Catholic Church or in the workplace; there are even those who argue that the mass shooting of 26-year-olds at Sandy Hook Elementary was a hoax pointing to a larger conspiracy against gun rights in the United States. ¹ In each of these challenges, the legitimacy of public memory and social normativity is questioned through rumors. Rumors are the unsubstantiated claims to truth that harm but are often tempered through publication or verbal refute. Yet, on the Net, the proclivity of rumors is particularly prone to propagation through the privatized world of social media platforms. Through the unregulated proliferation of gossip, opinion, and scuttlebutt, the (world) wide web is transmogrified into the Wild Web in which rumors pullulate and thwart democratic values of communication in a free and democratic society.

Metaphorically, the Net is awash with social media platforms that create the expanse of an open sea environment. ² The great body of this globally accessible ocean permeates the cyberworld and keeps rumors of the Net ensnared within its unregulatable net(s). Due to the boundless expanse of this open sea, rumors are diluted with the help of powerful search engines that categorize the narrow while removing context. With algorithmic methods that may seek to regulate some content, the reaches of the internet become immense and through this vastness, potentially beyond the reaches of this paper. Yet, the conceptualization of rumor-mongering in spaces that exist virtually have real and tangible consequences that need not include a discussion of the entire scope of the internet. For the narrowed purposes of this paper, the scope of this conceptualized environment is metaphorically defined as the brackish part of the bay as the saltwater mixes with the fresh water to foster harsh conditions as extreme social pressure and inaccuracy leads to difficulties in speaking or presenting the truth. In this most challenging and turbulent environment, rumors abound due to a clear absence of space for detection. The ensuing circulation within the Wild Web where rumors are caught is difficult to trace and furthers the spread of deleterious rumors. While their emissions act to misrepresent fact and invade the Net, the immense pressure of either law or profit at particular depths can perpetuate their detection. As the Trump/Russian scandal as one example shows, these rumors are often intentionally created for political purposes.

“Rumors are lifted in the air and dispersed through social media platforms,” ³ but the inhabitation of the unrestricted space of the Net lies in the hands of different audiences of experienced and inexperienced readers. Initially, silent readers are the ones who listen and decrypt information without becoming entangled in the actions led by the players. They tend to remain outside the Wild Web despite the power of attraction to join and advance rumors. In contrast, active readers always take part in actions that arise from this open environment and reproduce these rumors in other platforms without either verification or reconsideration of the rumors they disseminate. Usually this audience of active readers is attracted immediately and ensnared by the nets of the web, as they can no longer consider other explanations as plausible and plunge directly into paranoia. ⁴ Consequentially, a kind of supervision of this frontier environment results, for which the Chief Supervisor remains the digital brigade in France and Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center ⁵ in the United States. These patrolling organizations have missions to welcome, guide, inform Internet users by providing complementary and alternative explanations to the rumors posted online. Their main goal is to recreate a digital and responsible ecosystem in response to this Wild Web with the purpose of challenging the phenomenology of “fake news” (source: Trump tweet). Yet, the method for both approaches is a conflicting reliance upon law. For in France rumors are speech that may be considered illegal as hate speech, but free speech is constitutionally protected in the United States.

2. Binary Framework: F.L.A.M.E. – P.R.E.D.A.T.I.O.N.S.

In considering access to rumors on the web, we can further examine the ontological logistics of how such information resonates with such vast and varied epistemological reverberation. This modeling consists of studying the principles of coherence that organize this binary framework of speech by exploring the underlying logic of extracting a method of dissemination and subsequent transmission of knowledge. This combination is linked to empirical studies that consider relevant social, cognitive and spatio-temporal contexts. Furthermore, the proliferation of new means of electronic communication using limited amounts of words has made the spread of rumors even more complex given the (ab)uses of the Net worldwide. A binary framework of two approaches, F.L.A.M.E. and P.R.E.D.A.T.I.O.N.S, depicts the resultant uncertainties and possible risks on this Wild Web. The interdependence between these two approaches, F.L.A.M.E. and P.R.E.D.A.T.I.O.N.S., does not only screen how rumors emerge, but also accounts for the consequential detriment affecting individuals.

3. Paradoxical Uses of Speech in Social Media

Speech is the complex articulation of opinion, of fact, of truth, of impossibility. In democratic culture, speech on the Net is provisionally presented as communication involving mass participation and interaction:

The ability of individuals and groups to share their views with others, and build on the ideas of others, and the promotion and dissemination of knowledge and opinion. All these values remain as important in a world of blogs, search engines, and social software. ²¹

In a positivist sense, speech carries legal protections such as the freedom of expression relating to acts of speech. Yet, speech is often more than communication. For example, act of expression “includes displays of symbols, failures to display them, demonstrations, many musical performances, and some bombings, assassinations, and self-immolations.” ²² In its theory of “free speech,” these acts should address “a large audience, and express propositions or attitudes thought to have a certain generality of interest.” ²³ “Since acts of expression can be both violent and arbitrarily destructive, it seems unlikely that anyone would maintain that as a class, they were immune from legal restrictions.” ²⁴ Legal restrictions may take the form of imposition of criminal sanctions, or of the general recognition of the courts of the right of persons affected by the acts. ²⁵

In a traditionalist sense, speech is a fluid communication of ideas that are expressed, change, and often morph through altered meaning and context. Ideas are fluid and morph depending upon received responses which perpetuate the evolving communication. Yet, through the context of the web, speech remains static and ever present, often in ways that harm through its permanence. As an example, the online social medium Twitter not only provides freedom of speech to its users but also amplifies hate speech with the re-tweeting facility ²⁶ for ideas that remain as initially presented.

On the Wild Web, there is a shift in speech through social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, text messages) that challenge traditionalist legal understandings of speech as the basis for the exchange of ideas. Speech is modified for purposes of longevity that harm through its perpetual presence. Social media are used to generate and spread good or bad information among connected users. Even if the number of wrongful activities is less important in terms of quantity, consequences can be higher in terms of pervasion on the Net, insofar as the aim is to cause direct, indirect or collateral damages to others. What remains compels a distinction in what might be considered protected speech, as rumor, once fleeting, is solidified and legitimized through its recurrence on social media. Rumor presents a shift in free speech in social media from ideas that could otherwise morph through dialogue and exchange to ideas that are the foundation for hate speech insofar as truth is manipulated for audiences at hand who receive and perpetuate these ideas.

Despite the shift in speech on social media, there remain limits as to the extent from which speech is hate speech and no longer enjoys protections as free speech. Whether as legislation that restricts speech as “hate speech” in order to ensure dignity, respect, and equality or as web-based regulatory bodies on social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) that attempt to hinder and prevent the reposting of violence or violent speech, the audience for any form of speech remains vital. For as Victor Hugo once said, “freedom begins where ignorance ends,” ²⁷ and “there is only one necessity, the truth; that is why there is only one force, the law.” ²⁸ Therefore, audience is a key consideration of the limitations of speech as the Net, in supporting communication, also promotes the longevity of those conversations while paradoxically revealing their temporal limitations as statements uttered: “The gross inequality among communicators in the marketplace of ideas and the inclination of people to believe messages that are already dominant socially or that serve unconscious, irrational needs.” ²⁹

In this way, the fundamental concept of Freedom of Speech has been substantially modified and reshaped with the use of digital technologies, which lead to mass participation and interactions. ³⁰ Traditionalist knowledge, such as that from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, acknowledged the role of audience and expressed faith in the “marketplace of ideas” from whence hate could be filtered out and dismissed by a democratic polity careful to socially restrict ignorance: “In a democratic culture, people are free to appropriate elements of culture that lay to hand, criticize them, build upon them, and create something new that is added to the mix of culture and its resources.” ³¹

In this way, speech on the internet, regardless of how crass or inflammatory, is nonetheless protected as free speech in the United States. On the web, those who create audience through their speech do not necessarily adhere to platform rules that often based upon the whims of private entities in contrast to more publicly governed venues of communication. In the examples that follow, the limits on hate speech from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram seemingly perpetuate caution, but are effectively empty in their policing against forms of hate speech appearing on the Wild Web of their sites and domains:

Facebook—Policy rationale: “We do not allow hate speech on Facebook because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion and in some cases may promote real-world violence. We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics – race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity and serious disease or disability. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define ‘attack’ as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or call for exclusion or segregation.” (https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/hate_speech)

Twitter—Hateful conduct policy: “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories. Hateful imagery and display names: you may not use hateful images or symbols in your profile image or profile header. You also may not use your username, display name, or profile bio to engage in abusive behavior, such as targeted harassment or expressing hat towards a person, group, or protected category.” (https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy)

Instagram—Respect other members of the Instagram community: “We want to foster a positive, diverse community. We remove content that contains credible threats or hate speech, content that targets private individuals to degrade or shame them, personal information meant to blackmail or harass someone, and repeated unwanted messages. We do generally allow stronger conversation around people who are featured in the news or have a large public audience due to their profession or chosen activities.” (https://help.instagram.com/477434105621119)

In thinking further about such policies as legislatively intended for public consumption, hate speech could be considered as a cousin of free speech. Indeed, “hate speech creates a situation to test the limits of free speech,” ³² and so, has real and devastating effects on peoples’ lives. Hate speech is harmful and divisive for communities and hampers social action in fighting discrimination. France is among the many countries that criminalize hate speech.

The European Court of Human Rights adopted a definition on hate speech as “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify racial hatred, xenophobia, anti-Semitism or other forms of hatred based on intolerance, including intolerance expressed by aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrism, discrimination and hostility towards minorities, migrants and people of immigrant origin.” ³³

Article 19 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any networks and regardless of frontiers.”

Article 29(2) of the UDHR states that “In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.”

Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1965 and implemented in 1969, contains extensive prohibitions against hate speech, including the declaration that “all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred [and] incitement to racial discrimination” are “offense[s] punishable by law.”

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which was proclaimed in 2000 and became legally binding with the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, sets out the range of political, civil, economic, and social rights of all European citizens and residents of the EU. Although Article 11 of the EU Charter asserts that “[e]veryone has the right to freedom of expression,” Article 1 states that “[h]uman dignity is inviolable” and “must be respected and protected.” The dignity of persons is taken to be not only a fundamental right, but the basis for other fundamental rights. Article 54 provides that “[n]othing in this Charter shall be interpreted as implying any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms recognized in this Charter.”

Yet, in contrast to European doctrine, the unwillingness to restrict hate speech is supported by the language of the United States Constitution through the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” hate speech is neither regulatable nor defined. In the United States, hate speech is considered free speech insofar as hateful ideas cannot be subject to censorship simply because they are ideas rather than actions. Although speech can come in many communicative forms (verbal, nonverbal, trademark, collective protest), the protection of speech includes the protection of viewpoint and words associated with that viewpoint, even if grossly unpopular (Snyder v. Phelps).

In a democratic polity, the (un)popularity of speech is intended to guard against hate insofar as Holmes’ idea of a “marketplace of ideas” is intended to keep unpopular viewpoints in a marginalized state and do not gain popularity. In this positivist framework, a democratic polity should be able to discern and spurn hateful viewpoints in popular discourse. Even when hate speech can be framed as inciting violence, the Constitution cannot discriminate against viewpoints of the minority through regulation that might regulate what would otherwise be considered hate speech (such as burning a cross or publishing hateful words). ³⁴ In this way, the paradox of the American model is that hate speech is protected as free speech rather than as potential violence or as a possible threat to democratic civility. Again, in the democratic polity of the United States, unpopular ideas are expected to be ignored, as suggested by Holmes’ view of the “marketplace of ideas” in which a capitalist framework of mainstream ideas marginalizes the inciteful, even the potentially harmful. Through this legal perspective, speech is just speech, or words and expressions convey ideas rather than actual violence. Where violence is criminalized, hate speech is merely speech and therefore constitutionally allowed.

4. Mass Participation and the Complexity of Freedom of Speech

In recent cases, the development of social media interactions to individual posts on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. has led to growing concerns about the manner in which this mass participation has engendered a systematic shift in the concept of freedom of speech and the way audiences comprehend, accept, and/or deny this due natural right. Indeed, electronic exchanges are rapidly growing across national boundaries, traversing the original roots that were thought for such posts. Besides as the Internet has removed any barriers with rather two contradictory ideas that are anonymization and mass aggregation, more frictions have arisen. Like the rhizome theory, every root, every connection, and every individual may view online messages in the way they think right, while removing its spatiotemporal context, and so interpreting it in other directions. The manner in which these social media platforms were built may no longer lead to a quality of exchange but rather to a lack of integrity and protection for their users, who are of different origin, religion, age, sex, and educational, legal, or political backgrounds. So, in the absence of temporally disciplined moderations, ³⁵ social media platforms grow even more complex with a failure to appropriately control the so-called hot reactions on the Wild/wide Web across many platforms. When this happens, confidence in the Web may be shaken irreparably causing anger, fury, or even revenge from part of their users against the others, while creating a solidarity chain of protection for the ones who originally posted the messages online.

5. The Plague With Variable Geometry

In conclusion, the binary framework, F.L.A.M.E. – P.R.E.D.A.T.I.O.N.S., is extracted from the plague of social media and their many actors and answers neither why nor how rumors persist; instead it allows us to see speech that exists in a democracy as unique according to a virtual venue. As La Fontaine originally stated in his fable, “depending on whether you are powerful or miserable, court judgment will make you white or black.” ⁴⁶ Here, social media platforms and accompanying speech is transmogrified into a new type of judicial proceeding closely related to popular retaliation of private web platforms rather than legal due process afforded individuals. Just as La Fontaine in his time denounced the causes of the “evil” in this fable, the plague in our contemporary world is transformed into living, terrifying and terrorizing social networks at will, like an epidemic difficult to contain without considering any of the circumstances inherent in its appearance. The plague—as in the days of La Fontaine—is a frequent evil to which irrational remedies are given, and which plunges Internet users into a worrying world, another calamity that can prove to be just as dangerous, poisonous as would be criminal acts actually committed against their original perpetrators. Even if this plague, this evil of the century is of variable geometry, its punishment/sanction is in opposition between “the just, the fair” and “the deceitfulness and the meanness.” When even the ideas are marketed, the market place’s ideas as values of democratic speech are called into question.