Censorship /ˈsɛnsəʃɪp/: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security
Article 57 of the Venezuelan Constitution states that ‘Everyone has the right to freely express his or her thoughts, ideas or opinions orally, in writing or by any other form of expression, and to use for such purpose any means of communication and diffusion, and no censorship shall be established’. It also states that ‘Censorship restricting the ability of public officials to report on matters for which they are responsible is prohibited’. Despite these entrenched protections and formal assurances, Venezuela is censoring the internet and increasing surveillance of its citizens.
Anger at President Nicolás Maduro’s use of emergency powers to pass laws without congressional approval has created a sense of general unease in Venezuela that is finding expression in physical and online protests. Maduro claims to be using his powers to fight an ‘economic war’ with unseen enemies, but taxes on alcohol and tobacco, alongside a collapsing economy, have turned people against him. As that anger has translated into protests, the government has responded by trying to shut it down.
Bloomberg reports that Venezuela has the highest misery rating in the world. The cause of this crisis is falling oil prices, astronomical inflation, and empty supermarket shelves. In 2017, civil unrest broke out with increasingly hostile anti-government sentiment. Violent confrontations between citizens and police led to a state of emergency. Anger spilled into the streets, resulting in violent public protests. Dozens were killed during this crisis. The government responded by trying to shut it down. Although mobile phone ownership has increased significantly in recent years, more than a third of Venezuelans do not have mobile coverage or access to the internet. They rely on broadcast television to receive their news.
The power of the internet is that it gives a Venezulean blogger the same power to speak to the world as CNN [315a].
The Venezuelan Government took control of the country’s news services by threatening to revoke the licences of any television stations that broadcast news reports depicting anti-government protests. Journalists have been harassed, threatened, and arrested for filming or recording these events. A large section of the media in Venezuela is now under government control. As the government ramps up its surveillance and censorship, the country is slowly slipping into anarchy.
Although Venezuelans have taken to sharing news via text messaging, President Maduro personally ordered an investigation into the telephone company Movistar for its alleged role in assisting the opposition. In response, Venezuelans have taken to social media using Instagram, SnapChat, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook to inform each other and the world of what is happening in their country. In response, the government flooded social media with positive images of happy people and peaceful government. The juxtaposition of images of bloodied protesters and smiling football supporters has been described as surreal.
The government has justified its control of news, restriction on social media, and increasing surveillance of its citizens on the basis that hate speech and fake news are damaging the economy. The result is that Venezuela’s government is broadcasting an alternate reality to its citizens’ mobile phones. The interrelationship of censorship, democracy, and human rights has a long and tortuous history. Censorship of the internet by government and corporations is a mechanism to silence dissent, suppress free speech, or prevent whistle-blowers from revealing corruption and misuse of power [316].1
9.2 A brief history of internet censorship
Censorship has followed the free expressions of men and women like a shadow throughout history. Censorship of content and services delivered via the internet is incompatible with democracy [317, p. 43]. In its infancy, the internet became a great ally of democracy. It enabled quick and inexpensive communication between like-minded activists. It gave the downtrodden a medium for sharing stories and for speaking with one voice. It was a scourge of anyone who abused their power.
The prospect that a government could take control of the internet or its content stabs at the very heart of its democratic ambitions. It is therefore not surprising that most of the governments that (overtly) censor the internet are authoritarian regimes.
Censorship comes in many forms.
Moral censorship is the removal of materials that are obscene or otherwise considered morally questionable. Pornography, for example, is often censored under this rationale, especially child pornography, which is illegal and censored in most jurisdictions in the world. Military censorship is the process of keeping military intelligence and tactics confidential and away from the enemy. This is used to counter espionage, which is the process of gleaning military information. The justification for military censorship is that state secrets protect national security.
The tension between national security and freedom of speech was at the heart of the government’s complaint in the wake of WikiLeaks. The US Government condemned the leak of 90,000 classified military records as ‘irresponsible’, saying that their publication could threaten national security. The documents released by the WikiLeaks’ website include details (for example) of previously unreported killings of Afghan civilians, and records showing that NATO had concerns that Pakistan’s intelligence agency was helping the Taliban in Afghanistan—an accusation Islamabad had denied. WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange. It describes itself as a multi-national media organisation and associated library. WikiLeaks specialises in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying, and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses.
Religious censorship is the means by which any material considered objectionable by a certain religion is removed. This often involves a dominant religion forcing limitations on less prevalent ones. Alternatively, one religion may shun the works of another when they believe the content is not appropriate for their religion.
Corporate censorship is the process by which editors in corporate media outlets intervene to disrupt the publishing of information that portrays their business or business partners in a negative light, or intervene to prevent alternative offers from reaching public exposure.
Political censorship occurs when governments hold back information from their citizens. This is often done to exert control over the populace and prevent free expression that might foment rebellion. Experts say Chinese media outlets usually employ their own monitors to ensure political acceptability of their content. Censorship guidelines are circulated weekly from the Communist Party’s propaganda department and the government’s Bureau of Internet Affairs to prominent editors and media providers.
In general, there is an east/west division on the types of censorship practised by governments. The west seeks to protect children and prevent terrorism, whereas in the east there is a desire for cultural preservation, the maintenance of harmony, and the prevention of unflattering portrayals of the government. Meanwhile, propaganda and fake news seem to be equally an issue on both sides of this ideological divide. In many poor countries or those with autocratic regimes, government actions are more important than the internet in defining how information is produced and consumed, and by whom [318].
9.4 Censorship’s relationship with free speech rights
‘The remedy is more speech, not enforced silence’, wrote US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis in 1927 in his defence of freedom of speech. Ninety years on, his position is often taken as read: in the marketplace of ideas, eventually the truth will out. Allowing government any control over the processes by which speech is produced and opinions are published poses obvious dangers [319, p. 75]. It is the province of the courts—not the government—to respond to victims of those who abuse the right to free speech and who use this process to defame, offend, bully, harass, mislead, or deceive.
Censorship and free speech are often seen as being two sides of the same thing, censorship often being defined as ‘the suppression of free speech’. Free speech is the right to express any opinion in public without censorship or restraint by the government. Of course, this suggests that the government is within earshot of what is being said. For this reason, private communications are not usually the subject of censorship. It is the public expression of speech that is being protected by the right. The advent of the internet, email, text messaging, and social media has made it easier than ever to self-publish and reach a wide audience. It is these platforms that post the greatest threat to authoritarian governments.
The desire for the right to speak as we wish is universal, but it is also accepted that it is mandatory that society control certain articulations. The classic case, with which even strict libertarians would concur, is that it is not permissible to shout ‘fire’ in a public setting when there is no real threat and where a rush of humans towards a few exits would probably result in many unnecessary injuries and deaths. Other instances include threats aimed at a head of state, hate speech, child pornography, violence against women, and other barbaric manifestations, all of which seduce sensitive people into thinking that perhaps this case does warrant censoring [320]. Notwithstanding these examples, care is still warranted or we will soon control every articulation, every action, and every thought. Taking away these reasonable justifications for censorship, the suppression of free speech is not taken lightly in most societies.
9.5 The battle against censorship on the internet
With the advent and increasing popularity of the internet in the 1990s, the fight against censorship took a new turn. A digital underground has emerged in the face of new threats to freedom of speech and freedom of association—both of which are given new and enhanced processes and forums, particularly across time and space.
The role that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, CNN’s iReport, and many other websites and blogs played in 2010 in Iran is a great example of this. Known as the Twitter Revolution, it was an early example of social unrest being broadcast to the world by those directly involved in real time. It is likely that social media did not play as strong a role as word of mouth and text messages in organising people to rise up against the authorities, but Twitter was the preferred medium for sharing what was happening with external news agencies and governments. The critical role of Twitter as a lightning rod for international attention established it as a tool for political communication rather than outright organisation. Iran’s post-election unrest was the micro-blogging service’s baptism by fire as a means to observe, report, and record, real time, the unfolding of a crisis.
Barack Obama’s use of Twitter and Facebook in his 2008 presidential campaign was an early testing ground for new media as a means of political communication and organisation. The practices pioneered there quickly spread to other political movements around the globe. President Obama’s immediate successor, Donald Trump, has adopted Twitter as his preferred platform to share his policies and his late-night presidential musings. Indeed, Trump’s failure to self-censor has brought him under fire. However, Twitter is now providing a powerful bulwark against a slide in his poll numbers, by allowing millions of supporters to make his case for him and deflect the controversies he delights in touching off. It was probably his single most effective tool in his defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.
Now let’s imagine that the owners or majority shareholders of Twitter decided to take control of its content for their own political ends. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass, and launched in July the same year. In August 2008, the first hashtags entered the Twittersphere. On 15 January 2009, a US Airways flight crashed on New York city’s Hudson River. A photo posted to Twitter broke the news before traditional media outlets, highlighting its emerging role as a news breaker.
In 2017, the key investors in the business of Twitter are Ev Williams, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, Jack Dorsey, and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. These investors expect financial returns for their investment; this begs the question how best to wield the power that comes from controlling a major player in the speech platforms provided by social media. With more than 300 million monthly active users, it is a platform for views rather than content creators. It was only in 2015 that it finally turned a profit for the first time.
In 2017, Twitter introduced a hate speech filter for the first time. The company has refused the opportunity to provide details on specifically how the new system works, but, using a combination of behavioural and keyword indicators, the filter flags posts it deems to be violations of Twitter’s acceptable speech policy and issues users with suspensions of half a day, during which they can post only to their followers. From the platform that once called itself the ‘the free speech wing of the free speech party’, these new tools mark an incredible turn of events. It is indicative of the general public’s distaste for certain types of speech. Before the introduction of the filter, Twitter took a more reactive role, shutting out users or imposing blackouts in certain countries only when asked. This responsive approach can be slow and one senior judge described Twitter as ‘out of control’ [321].
What caused Twitter to change its policy in the free speech versus hate speech debate? The answer is business. In 2016, the company attempted to sell itself and suitor after suitor walked away, with several since apparently suggesting that their decision was at least in part due to concerns about Twitter’s role as a centrepiece of the online hate speech movement. Suddenly hate speech was a big deal to the company, and it announced plans to invest heavily and swiftly in curtailing abusive posts and behaviour. Censorship in this case has been self-imposed and the driver for this decision was capitalism. The market has spoken and free speech was the victim.
Should free speech be curtailed to limit the distribution of hate speech? Should racist activity be monitored, even if this impinges on civil liberties? It is extraordinarily difficult to draw a meaningful line separating constitutionally protected hate speech and hate speech that should be the subject of criminal prosecution. Hate speech is also subjective and contextual. What is hateful often lies in the eye of the beholder [322].
Studies have shown that authoritarian regimes tend to censor the media to limit potential threats to the status quo. In 2014, Vladimir Putin shut down the state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti, replacing it with RT—the state’s propaganda arm. Officially, the Kremlin described the change as a way to ‘provide information on Russian state policy and Russian life and society for audiences abroad’.2 But it is easy to see through this thinly disguised veil to the truth that this is the Kremlin’s latest effort to reassert control over its domestic mass media. RIA Novosti had a growing reputation for pursuing independent and analytical reporting. Putin’s patience wore out [323]. And Putin’s Russia is only one of an increasing number of authoritarian regimes that has effectively retooled its strategy of controlling the media.
Despite the rapid rise of the internet and social media, governments in China, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Iran, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere are finding ways to use state-controlled media to help themselves stay in power. China’s central government has cracked down on press freedom as the country expands its international influence, but, in the internet age, many of its citizens hunger for a free flow of information. The Chinese government has long kept tight reins on both traditional and new media to avoid potential subversion of its authority. Its tactics often entail strict media controls using monitoring systems and firewalls, shuttering publications or websites, and jailing dissident journalists, bloggers, and activists [324]. They achieve this through selective censorship of political expression and by using state media to influence crucial audiences. Although such censorship practices were traditionally aimed at broadcast and print media, the emergence of the internet and social media, in particular, prompted some authoritarian regimes, such as the Assad regime in Syria, to try to exert a similar level of censorship on the internet as well. During the Arab Spring, the Syrian regime blocked hundreds of websites that provided social networking, news, and other services. Taking Syria as a case study, media research indicates that internet censorship succeeded in preventing internet users from reaching censored online content during the Arab Spring of 2010–12. Syrians fought back by using technology that circumvents website-blocking tools [325].
In Zimbabwe, censorship is squarely aimed at poetry, songs, satire, and film. In 1967, the Rhodesian government crafted the Censorship and Entertainment Act to stifle dissenting black voices. This Act contains some very controversial sections which would make life difficult for all Zimbabweans. The Act also states that all radio stations and DJs in bars are supposed to send their music for approval 24 hours before they play it, something that is practically impossible. In 1967, there was only one radio station and a few bars, but now, with more than eight radio stations directly linked to the state and more than a thousand bars in Harare alone, it is nightmarish to implement. As an instrument to suppress entertainment, the Act is outdated. It is out of sync with technological advancements. However, since independence, the Act has been used to control political plays and human rights artistic productions that may empower opposition and dissenters. In an act of blatant nepotism and cynical control, President Robert Mugabe’s daughter Bona Mugabe-Chikore was appointed in May 2017 to the Zimbabwean censorship board. The Board has been mandated to regulate the media, particularly to gag social media platforms ahead of next year’s general elections [326]. The appointment of a younger generation of Mugabes to enforce heavy censorship and smooth the way for ‘democratic process’ is a clumsy approach to managing opposition when technology is being used elsewhere to pseudonymise voices and hide content.
For several years over various jurisdictions, censorship circumvention tools constituted a threat to the information control systems of authoritarian regimes, highlighting the potential of such tools to promote online freedom of expression in countries where internet censorship is prevalent [325].
The term ‘fake news’ has become so commonplace that it is hard to believe it was barely in use before November 2016.
With powerful social media organisations controlling their users’ newsfeeds, there is a danger that this bastion of democratised free speech is actually controlled by middlemen and brokers who are mediating and manipulating the reputation of our news feed. This phenomenon has significant implications for the way that information is shared.
For the first time since the start of the 20th century, the generation of news and publications was in the hands of individuals. However, the internet has also created a hierarchy of websites that have grown in dominance and worth, not by winning exclusive broadcasting licences, but by feeding users with the content they want [317]. And how do these websites and platforms know what the users want? The users tell them: every time they react to or like a post, they communicate their political, social, and personal preferences about every aspect of their lives.
The withholding of news or the context and timing of its distribution can shape the way it is received, if at all. The role that ‘fake news’ can play in choosing leaders and deciding national interests played out in 2016, a year of counterintuitive elections shaped by rampant misinformation.
The term ‘fake news’ exploded in popularity during the 2016 US election, when commentators pointed to fabricated and inflammatory clickbait distributed through social media as both cause and evidence of the country’s polarisation. The news media elites, from Facebook, to Twitter and Reddit, far from championing freedom have instead engaged in overt censorship [327].
One of the most profound and successful attempts to avoid internet surveillance and censorship is the Tor browser. Often associated with ‘the dark web’, Tor software protects internet users from detection by bouncing their communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites that are blocked. Tor defends against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. It is an effective censorship circumvention tool. In addition to Tor, the Tor2web project is software that allows users to access the services provided in Tor via their usual, more conventional internet browsers.
Developed by Aaron Swartz and Virgil Griffith in 2008, Tor2web supports whistle-blowing and anonymous publishing through Tor, allowing materials to remain hidden while making them accessible to a broader audience. Meanwhile, Griffith is the mastermind behind WikiScanner, which was a publically searchable database that allowed users to detect the organisations behind edits in Wikipedia. Griffith asserted that WikiScanner could help make the content that is regarded as factual in Wikipedia more reliable. This style of internet activism has been lauded by some human rights agencies, most notably with humanitarian awards conferred on Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for their work revealing secret government and military documents and video footage via WikiLeaks.3
However, these internet applications and their developers have a major flaw: they do not protect the identity of the whistle-blowers and developers. Assange and Snowden have both sought asylum in London and Moscow, respectively [328]. Tor also has its weaknesses. For example, Tor cannot and does not attempt to protect against monitoring of traffic at the boundaries of the Tor network (that is, the traffic entering and exiting the network). Detection of this activity is akin to seeing someone enter and leave a bank, although activity and transactions inside the bank are not detectable.
9.7 What part can the blockchain play in the war against internet censorship?
Censorship and fake news can contribute equally to the manipulation and degradation of information in all societies. Blockchain has the potential to address both of these Wicked Problems.
The pursuit of truth—of facts—is the necessary foundation for human decision-making and human progress, in the policies of governments, in the discoveries of science, and in the lives of individuals, societies, and nations [329].
In the early days of the internet, users who wanted to circumvent authorities would use proxies or anonymisers to avoid detection. The obvious difficulty with this approach is that, once the address of a proxy or an anonymiser has been announced for use to the public, the authorities can easily filter all traffic to that address. This poses a challenge as to how proxy addresses can be announced to users without leaking too much information to the censorship authorities. This model is also relatively weak when it comes to protecting information, as opposed to individuals. It accepts that content will be detected by government agencies. Rather than disguising the content, this approach disguises the user. Not only is this problematic once the user’s identity has been revealed, also the content itself is not safe from detection.
With the internet playing an ever-increasing role in social and political movements around the globe, it is important for the foot-soldiers in the movements to find ways to elude authoritarian regimes and communicate their plans and activities. Activists also need to connect with, organise, and communicate to ordinary citizens (and the rest of the world) the news of arrests and crackdowns that the political powers do not want to be known to the wider local and global community. Importantly, they need to protect their identities. This is where the blockchain comes in.
Blockchain-based social networks can operate without surveillance and censorship. Veritas, for example, is a Swiss-based decentralised platform for journalists. Harnessing blockchain’s revolutionary features, this community-based forum confers the validation process on the community of users. By voting on content, the community rates it as valid, spam, or unwanted. Once an article reaches 1000 votes, it is treated as validated. Those who vote are rewarded with tokens or ‘trusted’ points, and their votes increase in value compared with the rest of the community. To incentivise voting, an initial coin offering released 100 million coins for a crowd sale, to ensure sufficient value in the system to support the technologists and development cost of the platform. Later coin releases paid for the validators and writers.
The popular social commentary website, Reddit, is also looking to migrate on to a blockchain network so that it can no longer be censored. Reddit’s registered members can contribute content and then the platform’s algorithms aggregate the metrics about its articles and posts. Organised into categories known as ‘subreddits’ the position of the content is curated by the community it serves. Users vote for the best articles and the name of the platform is a play on the words ‘I read it’. However, Reddit’s commitment to free speech is not necessarily a happy path. Policing abusive, offensive, and illegal content is slow, expensive, and time-consuming. Users do not appreciate being confronted by Nazi symbols and hate speech against ‘fat people’, but monitoring and deleting content is not consistent with Reddit’s business model.
As modern Venezuelans know, the key to a government’s efforts to censor their citizens is surveillance. Finding ways to preserve public communication in the face of government disapproval and control is very difficult, particularly for those who aim to avoid detection. Promoting freedom of speech, Alexandria is a web-based project that detects and then automatically encodes controversial Twitter posts on to a blockchain network, before authorities have had a chance to censor or take down the post. Detection is achieved with a keyword search, based on a bank of politically sensitive topics [44]. Alexandria monetises media and ensures that content creators can distribute the same artefact in countless ways [330].
A peer-to-peer decentralised system could combat the growing problem posed by both government censorship and ‘fake news’. The key to any success in combating fake news will be the use of reputation systems to provide a clear and reliable indication to readers that the content they are reading is not fabricated or manipulated. This is not easy. The decentralisation of information poses one of the blockchain’s biggest challenges. How does one decide which source is reputable?
Wikipedia is a very good example of how useful and yet at the same time unreliable online information can be. Validating volunteered information is not easy. Even though Wikipedia is filled with interesting information and its popularity drove the final nail in the coffin of hard copy encyclopaedias, it is impossible to fully validate its contents. Indeed, in March 2016, an anonymous user accessed the editing function in Wikipedia to alter the definition of blockchain to remove the words ‘bitcoin’ and ‘permissionless’ [331]. Although it is accepted that blockchain networks are not necessarily permissionless and do not have to tokenise value or assets like bitcoin, this tampering with definitions was regarded as vexatious enough to see the revocation of the culprit’s Wikipedia editing rights. Bitcoin and blockchain enthusiasts took to Twitter in response, expressing their concern that this was a deliberate effort to use the forum as a vehicle to push an agenda. Keeping Wikipedia free of political or commercial interests is key to ensuring its reputation as a reliable source of objective facts and information. Wikipedia is just one (albeit significant) website of ‘facts’.
There are many who need protection from ‘fake news’ and manipulation by interest groups. There is a groundswell of interest in the protection of the integrity of online information, particularly when facts and analysis are intended to inform democratic processes. The blockchain can do for news and other social media what it has done for bitcoin and Veritas—allow the community to curate, police, and censor its content [332].
9.8 How Blockchain will disrupt the content industry
Ever since the first online article or video was published, there have been a plethora of problems that content creators face, no matter how secure or professional the sites may be. Almost any content creator has experienced their content being copied or ripped by others, without their consent. In addition, since the start of Trump’s presidency, fake news is, unfortunately, the new normal. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, even medical journals are now experiencing problems with fake news [333]. The open-access system of allowing the internet to distribute high-quality research to a wider audience has allowed unreliable content into the mix.
Spam also remains a problem, because people keep falling for it. In addition, spam is extremely cheap to send out, which means only a few individuals out of millions have to be taken in to make it worth sending. For the last few years, the best methods to fight spam have been to attempt to legally shut down spammers and create better spam filters. However, now there is a new solution that could dramatically limit the possibility of sending spam.
Blockchain can limit or prevent spam by creating email networks with individual nodes rather than centralised servers. A system will be guarded against attacks by using blockchain when receiving or sending emails. The system is protected and not open to spam on any individual node. There are even methods available for nodes to receive tokens in the network, similar to how Bitcoin operates. Users can ultimately get fair compensation for receiving only legitimate content. Another option to prevent spam is the application of a reputation mechanism when creating content. Users who send spam will need to pay a very small amount for each email sent, but when you are sending millions of emails it can become expensive very quickly.
Losing control of your content online is not just limited to other individuals using it without giving you credit. ‘Proof of Existence’ is an online service that incorporates blockchain. It involves content being certified and time stamped into the blockchain, providing a cryptographic record. It is a public record proving that you own the content without actually revealing the information or yourself. When you add the metadata of the content on the blockchain as well, it becomes possible to prove at any time that you were the original creator. These aspects of blockchain will lead to increased accuracy and overall confidence in online content.
Although blockchain is still in the beginning stages of practical implementation, there are several companies that are already using the technology. The following are examples of how different blockchain start-ups are incorporating blockchain into their business model.
1 Theta Labs: Theta Labs is starting a decentralised network that provides blockchain video streaming. They have taken on the challenge of featuring videos all over the world at lower costs. Theta is accomplishing this by offering a peer-to-peer video delivery system. Theta will also offer a cryptocurrency. Using blockchain, this network will provide quality streaming without the usual high cost of content delivery infrastructure;
2 Mine Labs: Mine Labs is a New York-based company that has created Mediachain which will protect the creator’s rights to a variety of digital work. Mediachain allows content providers to store data with time stamps. This means that the digital content can be found in a decentralised system, thereby safeguarding a content creator’s work;
3 Chimaera: using blockchain, Chimaera has provided a way to manage complicated game worlds while also securing the sharing and ownership of virtual assets. Chimaera is providing a platform for almost an unlimited number of players to play a variety of games;
4 Civil: Civil, a journalism company, is providing a news platform with the help of blockchain. Using Civil, creators of news content can publish news, collaborate with colleagues, and directly receive compensation for their content;
5 Veredictum: this Australian start-up is in the process of creating applications that will register content on blockchain. The company is working to reduce the amount of video and film theft. This process will make it easier to recognise illegal content. Users can load their content, certify ownership, and set the terms of distribution;
6 Blocktech: Blocktech is also working on a concept that creates an unalterable ledger. They have found a way to preserve tweets cryptographically to make sure that they are not edited;
7 LBRY: this is a digital marketplace that provides a platform for you to upload your own content to a variety of hosts and ultimately for you to own your own data. LBRY features a digital library where you can find everything from music to e-books;
8 Imagjn: this is a decentralised collaboration platform enabling individuals, organisations, and things to collaborate and create high-quality content, governed by reputation.
Without any one individual maintaining or controlling a database, blockchain will ultimately change the way content is created and maintained. Literally thousands of people will have their own copy of a particular database.
Further down the road, even Facebook and Google may lose the power they currently possess, with privacy and autonomy restored to the individual. Providers such as Amazon and YouTube currently take a fairly high percentage of artists’ and authors’ products. Blockchain will hopefully disrupt the status quo and provide an easier and more effective way for creators of content to keep more of their earnings, which is one of the objectives of the company Imagjn.
The days of centralised, commercially owned data may eventually go the way of the horse and buggy. The beginning of the revolution may include improving commerce, saving money, and changing the content industry as we know it. As blockchain technology continues to improve and advance, content creators will finally recover control over their content and be able to make a fair living with it.
Free speech plays an important role in democracy, freedom of association, and freedom of expression. It is a fundamental human right. Without freedom of press and support for information integrity, development in countries that struggle to house, educate, and feed vulnerable people cannot happen. Freedom of expression and access to information play a crucial role in good governance, transparency, and accountability—and these in turn are pillars of sustainable development [334].
Human rights and fundamental freedoms are essential for equitable and sustainable development, and good governance (specifically rule of law, democracy, access to justice and information, transparency, and accountability) enables sustainable development. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals include education, equality, innovation, and climate action. To achieve these aims, it is important to allow democratic institutions to operate free of constraint on truth and information. Decentralising control and allowing consensus to curate truth and journalism using blockchain technology may be a valuable tool in this campaign. For Venezuelans, blockchain-based innovation cannot come soon enough.
Truth, famously, is the first casualty of war and this is experienced daily in the troubled streets of Caracas. In Venezuela, the media have been under immense pressure for years, first under Hugo Chávez and now from the Maduro administration [329, 335]. Venezuelans describe their daily lives as confused and exhausted. A recent alleged attempted coup by a lone helicopter pilot dropping grenades was reported by some to be a government conspiracy—manipulated by Maduro to justify government oppression [336]. Conspiracy theories were fuelled by conflicting reports that the perpetrator was either ex-special forces or an aspiring actor, or both. Revelations of fake news about threats to the government and deaths of activists, and rumours that the first family is fleeing the country [337], and the military is mobilising against Maduro [338], only make a bad situation worse. As it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction, Venezuelans say they are unable to make decisions [339].
While Maduro promises a prosperous post-oil future and a strong agricultural economy, the outlook seems unlikely to brighten soon. Venezuela is expected to remain deep in recession unless the structural problems afflicting the country are addressed soon [340]. In this context, separating fact from fiction has never been so important for decision-making. The fake news in Venezuela comes from a variety of sources, many of them unidentified, most of them with vested interests in the current conflict [335]. However, blockchain technology can offer secure social networks and verified journalism, protecting not just content, but also its creators.
Notes
1 The most widely censored content on the internet is pornography. Although some may regard pornography as harmless and defend its publication on the grounds of free speech and freedom of expression, the suppression of such content is not generally regarded as impinging on the freedoms associated with democratic free speech and journalistic integrity. It is this latter type of censorship that is the subject of this chapter.
2 https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2017/10/kommersant-russia-lists-norways-svalbard-policy-potential-risk-war
3 Julian Assange has been awarded media, journalism, peace and freedom prizes, and medals by more than a dozen organisations including The Economist, Amnesty International, the Sydney Peace Foundation, and the Union of Journalists in Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, in 2013 and 2014, Edward Snowden was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, the Right Livelihood Award (an international award to ‘honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges’), and the Stuttgart Peace Prize.