I'd like to wish all readers of this newspaper a healthy & prosperous 2023: one as free as possible from war, coercion, state-sponsored, and other types of bullying.
I’ve been writing these columns for almost 5-years now and I'm flattered and grateful for the various comments I receive about the topics covered in my monthly offerings, including - no - especially those that disagree with me.
I try to practice what I preach and welcome all views prompted, or sometimes provoked by my explanations of the core libertarian principles when applied to the challenges and opportunities of the present times.
As ever, we must remain vigilant in the defence of these vital freedoms, as governments around the globe seek to constrain the free exchange of ideas and opinions. We mustn't kid ourselves that the British state, if it had the chance, wouldn't wish to control what its citizens say and think as its equivalents in China or Iran are doing - with murderous consequences.
And when access to opinions, views, and contentions is shut down, it becomes all too easy for authoritarian regimes, such as that of Putin's Russia, to hoodwink their populations into backing and prosecuting illegal wars.
Nowhere is this conflict of interests at its most intense than across the various major online platforms.
The UK Government has been piloting its Online Safety Bill (OSB) through Parliament and it is currently at the House of Commons Report Stage. The headline intention is to hold the likes of Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and other social media platforms, fully accountable for pre
This is a form of privatised control: the companies are being forcefully franchised to censor speech on behalf of the Government (or more precisely the Secretary of State for Culture, and the regulator, Ofcom).
This is in spite of the fact that there are already sufficient laws in place for the authorities to act in terms of child abuse, hate speech and cybercrime.
Were it not for a heroic rear-guard action by various campaign groups and libertarian Conservative MPs, the Bill would also have required technology platforms to take down (so called) legal but harmful material.
I find quite a lot of what I read online to be offensive, ill-judged, or plain silly. But I'd rather have a chance to engage with, mock, and/or disprove the value of such content.
Suppression doesn't usually mean such views have been defeated. They are merely reinforced in the minds of those who adhere to them and articulated in end-to-end encrypted conversations. There are still concerns that the Bill, even as currently drafted, might give the state powers to infringe such encryptions, even when no law is thought to be being broken.
The state is remorseless in its efforts to control what goes on in people's minds and what they type out on their keyboards.
It's still not too late to lobby your MP to ensure that the OSB is as focussed and as slim as possible.
One person who is trying to establish a freer online experience is, of course Elon Musk, a self-confessed 'free speech absolutist'.
I have to confess that I'm a little conflicted about him, even though he is a self-styled libertarian. To date, I’ve not seen much change on the platform however, I do take some guilty pleasure in seeing a few virtue-signalling celebs & luvvies closing their Twitter accounts in protest at Musk’s ownership.
At his best, he is a model libertarian. In 2021 he said: "in general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness,”
As tech author and entrepreneur Antonio García Martínez, says, Musk's removal of hundreds of content moderators is a move against "the professional-managerial class regime that otherwise everywhere dominates." In short, this is a rebellion against the heavy-hand of virtue-signalling corporate governance - a useful ally of the equally heavy-handed state.
I rather like the direct democracy aspects that he's recently introduced, including the polls about how the platform should be run and who should be allowed on it.
Twitter now exemplifies a much freer flow of information - allowing individuals to engage with it or not, and to agree with it, or not.
But just as I'm worried about a bullying state, I'm nervous about Musk as an overbearing powerful individual, able and willing to shut down opinions at a whim. The temporary 24-hour suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of journalists because Musk didn't like the information they were sharing about him, was not an encouraging sign. The only good thing about this move was that it was temporary.
And perhaps it would be better all-round if Musk now acted on the mandate from one of those polls - to step back and find a chief executive charged with further enhancing the platform, allowing him to be an advocate for those freedoms he has so long articulated?
Individual freedom will not be protected by one or two billionaires, rather by millions and millions of individuals like you and me.
First published in www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk on Thursday, January 5, 2023
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