Government-imposed censorship of the Internet in the guise of well-meaning efforts to combat disinformation on the web can have real-life consequences.

Last week I attended the Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy.  Among the many sessions I attended was one by a group of Palestinian journalists who gave a passionate presentation about how their voices are not being heard on the Gaza conflict.

One of these journalists pointed to an analysis on content moderation by Meta.  He claims that this study showed that there is significantly more content in Arabic being filtered out than is content posted in Hebrew.  While I have no way to verify this claim, it is important to consider that there is a perception of discriminatory censorship of Palestinian voices with respect to this highly controversial subject.

When the relative moderates within a group like the Palestinians believes that their voices are being stifled, that only empowers the more extreme elements within that group.  It is not a positive result to have for those who wish to resolve conflict through dialogue and discourse to be silenced.  It is the more moderate voices who should be encouraged – otherwise the extremists who advocate violence will be empowered.     

When the Digital Services Act (DSA) first was effectuated, one of the first actions taken by the EU Commission was to launch investigations of platforms who allowed postings that allegedly constituted disinformation or hate speech regarding the Gaza war.  As I have previously written, the DSA does not define either disinformation or hate speech, which makes it extremely difficult for platforms to determine what is permissible and what is not.  Obviously, there are redlines that should not be crossed, such as advocating violence, or disparaging people based on race, religion or sexual orientation.  But there are many legitimate forms of controversial or even offensive speech that many would argue should not be subject to government censorship if we want to preserve the free flow of ideas in democratic societies.

Given this background, one has to wonder whether, intentionally or unintentionally, the EU Commission set in motion discriminatory content moderation policies by large platforms when it issued stern warnings about content posted in the early stages of the Gaza conflict.

A controversial subject like the Gaza war illustrates the perilous nature of the EU delving into mandates for content-moderation by platforms based on ill-defined concepts of what constitutes disinformation.  Allowing the free flow of ideas, even controversial ones, is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of democracies.  Once governments start to pressure private companies like Internet platforms to make judgment calls about what speech is allowed, we may be on a slippery slope toward more and more voices being muzzled, thereby giving larger voice to extremists who do not try to persuade with only words.