Friday, January 27, 2023
No Result
View All Result
  • Media
Support Us
Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Energy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Energy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media
No Result
View All Result
Macdonald-Laurier Institute

Elon Musk’s first move should be removing dictators from Twitter: Kaveh Shahrooz in the Globe and Mail

One way Elon Musk and the new Twitter team can strike a blow for free speech is to ban governments that deny their citizens the right to use Twitter.

May 3, 2022
in Columns, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy Program, In the Media, Kaveh Shahrooz, Latest News
Reading Time: 4 mins read
A A

This article originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.

By Kaveh Shahrooz, May 3, 2022

From banning stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop to its lockout of satire site the Babylon Bee for running afoul of new gender ideology, it is no secret that Twitter has a free speech problem. How Elon Musk – Twitter’s soon-to-be new owner who claims he wants to promote free speech on the platform – will rectify the problem is not clear.

Even well-intentioned free speech advocates encounter hard decisions on where to draw the line. How can a platform deal with obvious falsehoods that go viral – particularly if those falsehoods undermine public-health or democratic norms? Will racist tweets be permitted? What about Holocaust denial? And whose definition of racism and Holocaust denial should be used, anyway? Because there is so much discretion, the free speech battles will rage for years to come.

One way Mr. Musk and his team can strike a blow for free speech – which, ironically, involves closing some accounts – is to ban governments that deny their citizens the right to use Twitter.

Five governments – China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Turkmenistan – effectively prevent their people from directly accessing Twitter. Others, such as Turkey and Nigeria, have used temporary bans on Twitter to block access to news the governments did not like.

Of course, hypocrisy is often a partner to repression, and the very governments that block their residents from accessing Twitter often allow their officials to make robust use of it to spread propaganda.

Chinese officials and government-affiliated sites, for example, regularly use Twitter to peddle their propaganda: spreading the regime’s narrative on COVID-19, promoting anti-Western COVID-19 conspiracies, exacerbating social divisions in the West, denying the repression in Hong Kong and the Uyghur genocide, and sabre rattling on Taiwan.

China’s “wolf warrior” diplomats have turned their rhetorical guns on Canada more than once, calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “boy” who has “turned Canada into a running dog of the U.S.” Chinese diplomats have even taken to spreading doctored photos on the platform, once posting a fake picture of an Australian solider holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child.

Iran does much the same. Its Supreme Leader uses the platform to spread anti-Semitism, deny Israel’s right to exist and issue violent threats against the United States. Iran’s former foreign minister openly celebrates terrorists to his more than 1.6 million followers. And the regime’s foreign-facing media operations – Press TV (English), HispanTV (Spanish), and Al-Alam (Arabic) – all rely on Twitter to spread the Iranian regime’s favoured narratives. This use of Twitter is particularly outrageous as Iran’s government repeatedly resorts not just to restricting Twitter, but shutting off the entire country’s Internet while carrying out mass killings of protesters.

Vladimir Putin and his cronies also engage in this hypocrisy. After its invasion of Ukraine, Russia blocked access to Twitter and other social media to control information about the war. But Kremlin-affiliated accounts continue to post regularly on Twitter. The Russian embassy in Canada denies the well-documented massacre in Bucha, calling it a “fake narrative” of the “Kiev regime,” and despite being kicked off many television platforms, RT and Sputnik, two Russia state-affiliated media, continue to churn out lies on Twitter.

Based on a narrow interpretation, Twitter has claimed that threatening tweets by dictators do not violate its policies. But by allowing authoritarians to stay on the network while citizens are denied access, Twitter effectively becomes a wellspring of unchallenged propaganda. This should not be permitted once Mr. Musk takes over.

Twitter also argues that certain world leaders, by virtue of their position, should keep their accounts because their words are “newsworthy.” But there is no reason that Twitter should be the platform for every newsworthy utterance. And banning Xi Jinping, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr. Putin and other dictators would not actually prevent them from making newsworthy pronouncements. They would simply turn to traditional media to do so.

Mr. Musk will have challenges as he tries to bring coherence to Twitter’s chaotic approach to free speech. He will be pilloried by the right if he moderates speech too heavily and attacked by the left if he uses too light a touch. But there is a basic point of fairness on which all sides of the spectrum could agree: Dictators should not get the free speech benefits of Twitter if they deny those same benefits to others at the barrel of a gun.

Kaveh Shahrooz is a lawyer and senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad. He is also a former adviser on human rights to Global Affairs Canada.

Source: The Globe and Mail
Tags: Elon MuskFree SpeechKaveh Shahroozsocial mediathe Globe and MailTwitter
Previous Post

Ottawa should reset its relationship with drug developers to improve patient health: Rawson and Adams for Inside Policy

Next Post

Is Canada a conservative country? Brian Lee Crowley on the Andrew Lawton Show

Related Posts

Canada can help Ukraine in better ways than sending tanks: Richard Shimooka in the Hub
Columns

Canada can help Ukraine in better ways than sending tanks: Richard Shimooka in the Hub

January 27, 2023
Just as Canadians see smartphone bills head down, the cost of watching online content on them may be going up: Peter Menzies in the Financial Post
Columns

Want cheaper cellphone bills? Allow more foreign investment in telecoms: Aaron Wudrick in the National Post

January 27, 2023
Face it, millennials – There is no realistic alternative to capitalism: Philip Cross in the Financial Post
Columns

Face it, millennials – There is no realistic alternative to capitalism: Philip Cross in the Financial Post

January 27, 2023
Next Post
Is Canada a conservative country? Brian Lee Crowley on the Andrew Lawton Show

Is Canada a conservative country? Brian Lee Crowley on the Andrew Lawton Show

Macdonald-Laurier Institute

323 Chapel Street, Suite #300
Ottawa, Ontario
K1N 7Z2 Canada

613.482.8327

info@macdonaldlaurier.ca
MLI directory

Follow us on

Newsletter Signup

First Name
Last Name
Email Address

Support Us

Support the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to help ensure that Canada is one of the best governed countries in the world. Click below to learn more or become a sponsor.

Support Us

Inside Policy Magazine

  • Current Issue
  • Back Issues
  • Advertising
  • Inside Policy Blog
  • Privacy Policy

© 2021 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Energy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media

© 2021 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

IDEAS CHANGE THE WORLD!Have the latest Canadian thought leadership delivered straight to your inbox.
First Name
Last Name
Email address

No thanks, I’m not interested.