Case studies on China censorship and Tech Giants banning Trump.

Chinese State Regulation (Censorship).
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‘There have been almost daily anti-BBC articles in Chinese state media since mid-February.

It follows a decision by the UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom to revoke the licence for China’s state-run overseas broadcaster, CGTN. For years, China has broadly criticised Western outlets for reports on affairs in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, saying they should not intervene in China’s “internal affairs”.

But these latest attacks on Western media are a clear escalation.

Chinese domestic media outlets have praised their government for banning the BBC’s World News channel, although it was only available in some international hotels and residential compounds where foreigners live.’


So Chinese Government censorship of the internet is alive and kicking. Do these actions seem justifiable to protect it’s Digital Sovereignty or is the impact harmful for its citizens?


What about The Western Model of Online Regulation?

And you all remember Trump being ceremoniously dethroned by Twitter who argued he was inciting citizens to violent action. This article in Forbes in the USA, argues this was neither an illegal or unfair action. Platforms can ‘dethrone’ whoever they like – terrorists, abusers, extreme political groups – so in this case, it just happened to be the President of the USA!

 

This is Twitter’s Explaination in a nutshell:

“After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service.”

Response

Many Trump supporters were arguing it was against the 1st Amendment and therefore an illegal act – however, platforms can apparently refer to their own terms and conditions and this is exactly what they did.

Trump moved to Parler, an app that encouraged free speech, but Parler itself was taken down by down by Amazon, Apple and Google!  The companies pulled support for the “free speech” social network, all but killing the service. Platforms regulating platforms.

This could be a good case study for how internet platforms are endeavoring to tow the line and perhaps do have our best interests at heart. But make sure you put this in context to the fact that in the UK, the new laws on internet harm, won’t be in place to next year and indeed tech giants do not want to ‘police themselves’, Mark Zuckerberg himself is requesting legislation, which at once protects free speech and also regulate against online harm and disinformation.

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