Terms and Conditions: Why the digital web is a censorship machine

All that watching is not without purpose. Watching is to make sure that we behave as we are expected to. Watching ensures that there is no deviation, and more importantly, if we give in to our mortal weaknesses, those moments will be censored and we will be censured. Santa Claus, with his never ceasing eye on us is the embodiment of these technologies of watching. He is the human face of the mechanical eye that watches, and when in doubt stops, blocks, deletes and removes information that might not be deemed desirable.

And just like with Santa, so much of the online censorship is performed by happy avatars and icons that we forget that censorship and censure are not the default modes of our existence. I recently met Jillian C York, the director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the co-founder of onlinecensorship.org, who introduced me to a platform that can make us aware of the enormous amount of online censorship and content takedowns which have become so commonplace on our social web.

Behind the guise of friendship and the pretext of sociality, the digital web is a huge censorship machine that monitors and controls political speech, nudity, LGBT content, anti-inflammatory statements, and what might be deemed deviant behaviour. The Terms of Service that we blindly agree to when we make our social media accounts, allow for big corporations to be the Santa Clauses of our digital lives, making sure that we are always nice. Sometimes, this censorship is obvious, where companies like Facebook remove pictures that they find offensive using algorithmic and human filters.

Sometimes, the takedown is more covert, and often comes in the guise of blocking sites or black-listing users that the collective intelligence thinks of as dubious or undesirable, like websites that countries like India block or messages that are removed from circulation. At other times, this censorship is even more hidden and at the level of design and practice, like when an application like WhatsApp, in order to curb competition, would not allow its users to copy or open links from messages that linked to the other online instant messaging system Telegram.

Read more: WhatsApp blocking links to rival app Telegram on Android phones

Onlinecensorship.org is a platform that wants to collect information from users who are victims of online censorship and takedown, to tell their stories, to report the abuse, and crowdsource the knowledge to show us how lacking our web is in transparency and accountability. The visualised programme invites users to report on content takedowns from Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, and YouTube.

By cataloging and analysing aggregated cases of social media censorship, the platform seeks to unveil trends in content removals, provide insight into the types of content being taken down, and learn how these takedowns impact different communities of users.

As York mentions, “We want to know how social media companies enforce their terms of service. The data we collect will allow us to raise public awareness about the ways these companies are regulating speech. We hope that companies will respond to the data by improving their regulations and reporting mechanisms and processes – we need to hold Internet companies accountable for the ways in which they exercise power over people’s digital lives.” Onlinecensorship.org has other tools for social media users, including a guide to the often-complex appeals process to fight a content takedown. It will also host a collection of news reports on content moderation practices.

So this festive season, as you hum your carols, and wrap your presents, remember that the best gift you can give yourself is the gift of knowing how Santa decides who is naughty or nice, why crying is not appreciated but laughing is. What are the decision making powers and who defines what the laws are of what is acceptable and what is not. And if you have ever been a victim of online censorship or want to see what are the global trends that emerge in these takedowns, give onlinecensorship.org a look. Make sure that Santa does not stand for the S in the NSA.

With 5,000-odd requests, India tops Facebook’s content restriction list