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Redefining online community Part 8: freedom of expression in online communities

4/14/2022

Finding and holding a very delicate balance …
To be honest I’ve been looking forward to writing about this particular topic since I first envisioned this ten-part blog series. I’ve known from the very beginning of the Eos project that we’d be challenged to strike a delicate balance between providing an assuredly safe, healthy space for people to share their experiences, thoughts, ideas, and feelings while also encouraging people to show up in their most authentic way. Sometimes thoughts and feelings can be messy, and being real with people can sometimes mean saying things they don’t necessarily want to hear.

Creating such a space to me ultimately comes down to a few clear guiding principles: community orientation, safety, respect, and integrity. Not coincidentally, those happen to be part of the core value set of The Intentional Living Collective, and they’re four of the core tenets of the Good Human Code of Conduct upon which the Eos content curation and member dispute processes are based. More on that later - but for now I’ll summarize this to say that all members agree to a.) value all member voices and strive for productive and healthy collaborations between all, b.) behave toward all members in ways that help them feel safe in all situations, c.) let their actions and words reflect our values and strive to meet our commitments, and d.) treat all members with respect at all times and use language that reflects appreciation of their wisdom and perspective. Further, all members agree to hold themselves and each other accountable for following these principles and we’ve built fair and transparent processes to help enforce them when needed.

So about that first amendment …
Freedom of speech is the right to express opinions without government restraint, and in the United States the First Amendment guarantees free speech - though it also places limits on this freedom. I thought the SCOTUS decision in Texas v. Johnson was particularly interesting. The First Amendment applies only to state actors, and there is a common misconception that it prohibits anyone from limiting free speech, including private, non-governmental entities. A private organization can and in some cases should place limits on speech in the interest of protecting its members - if it’s done in fairness and with respect to all involved.

Freedom of expression is considered by the United Nations (UNESCO) to be the cornerstone of democracy. International human rights laws protect freedom of expression, and one of the most fundamental documents is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) drafted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948. In Article 19 of the UDHR, it states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Even though there are fundamental laws protecting freedom of expression, there are multiple international laws that expand on the UDHR and pose limitations and restrictions, specifically concerning the safety and protection of individuals. For example, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) addresses hate speech through the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and monitors its implementation by State parties. Also article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) prohibits national, religious, or racial hatred that incites violence, discrimination, or hostility.

So who decides what content or speech is and isn’t acceptable?
Oh man, there’s a lot to explore here. If you want to explore this topic in more depth than I can possibly cover in a single blog post, please feel free to dive into this wiki on freedom of speech and expression. For now I’ll just touch on a couple of specific subtopics - obscenity and hate speech.

Obscenity. In a 1964 case about pornography, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, in Jacobellis v. Ohio, famously said that, although he could not precisely define pornography, "I know it when I see it". Later, the Court decided Miller v. California (1973) and said that a work is obscene if: (a) 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find the work, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest ... (b) ... the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) ... the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Interestingly, “Community" standards—not national standards—are applied to determine whether allegedly obscene material appeals to the prurient interest and is patently offensive. The standards of the Eos community, then, are the ones that will guide us as to what’s offensive and what isn’t.

Hate speech. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". Hate speech is "usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, colour, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation". Laws against hate speech can generally be divided into two types: those intended to preserve public order and those intended to protect human dignity. The line between free speech and hate speech is a tricky one, as evidenced when the ACLU defended a neo-nazi group over freedom of speech. In the case of Eos, our content guidelines will serve both of those purposes - and not just in cases of obscenity or hate speech.

Community standards and content curation
The concept of “Community standards” seems like a pretty reasonable place to start, right? Except … someone has to define what those standards are. In defining the Eos “Good Human Code of Conduct” (GHCOC) we start with the understanding that we’re all unique individuals and that none of us want to be unnecessarily controlled or told how to behave. To that end, we knew it was important to give “clear enough” guidance on what is and isn’t okay while providing enough room for individuals to express themselves in their most authentic way. We based the GHCOC on the eight core values of The Intentional Living Collective: community, safety, integrity, respect, fairness, supportiveness, constructiveness, and organicness (yes, that’s really a word) and we put it right into the membership agreement that everyone signs before they can post any content on Eos. To reiterate - anyone can view the non-private content that’s posted in Eos, but only members that agree to behave according to the GHCOC can post content. While that may sound prescriptive on face value, I believe that this is the most fair and enforceable way to create a safe space for all members.

So if all members agree to follow the GHCOC when posting content or interacting with other members, who is responsible for enforcing the GHCOC and how will they do it? Simply put, the community is. The Eos content curation system, also clearly spelled out in the membership agreement, is based on three key principles: transparency, fairness, and community determination and enforcement. To summarize the process, members first hold themselves accountable to follow the GHCOC, then they gently hold each other accountable, then they can ask for moderator intervention if needed, and unresolved conflicts between members are ultimately decided by an escalation team run by actual community members. In the event that a member is an unrepentant jerk and keeps breaking the GHCOC with their content or posts, they will simply lose their account privileges.

I’ll end this post with the same honesty I started it with - I can’t even pretend to know how well this is going to work at first. I do know that it isn’t going to be perfect, and I fully expect that it’ll be tested quite fully as more and more members join and then start posting content and interacting with each other. I think we’re based on solid principles and processes, and I know we’re going to learn and adjust as we go. It’s a New Earth, and I’m super excited to be part of it!

Coming up next: Online security, privacy and safety

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Redefining online community Part 7: Seriously, most free apps aren’t really free.

4/3/2022

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April 2022
Author Cal Loo is a serial social entrepreneur, the founder and executive director of a nonprofit company, a self-professed techie at heart, a 30-year tech consultant, and an ordained ceremonialist. He has been blogging about living more intentionally and navigating major life transitions since 2015. In this seventh piece in a ten-part series Cal explores hidden costs of “free” app. In future posts he’ll address online security, online safety, and freedom of speech/information. He’ll close this series by introducing the Eos Community Connections Portal – an online community connections portal unlike any of the others.

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”People have been throwing around this popular adage since the 1930s, basically saying that nothing is ever really free. Sometimes, you’ll just hear the acronyms TNSTAAFL, TINSTAAFL, and TANSTAAFL. It’s hard to say who actually originated it, but free-market economist, nobel laureate and author Milton Friedman popularized it with his book There’s No Such Thing As a Free Lunch. In the context of this blog, TNSTAAFL suggests that things that appear to be free will always have some hidden or implicit cost to someone, even if it is not the individual receiving the benefit.

In the software industry, we also say: “If you aren’t paying for a product, you are the product.” All-for-profit companies sell something, and their underlying objective is normally to make as much money as they can doing so. Whoever is paying for that something is the real customer. When it comes to social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram, and most search engines like Google or Bing, the platform owners make a ton of money somewhere, and it isn’t always obvious how they’re doing it. If you are using a service you don't pay for, it's because they may be selling the data they collect about you while you’re using their product, or selling ad space to sponsors that take advantage of the fact that the platform has your attention. Facebook, for example, has spent an embarrassing amount of time and energy defending their data usage and management practices. In the end, it’s become very clear that they’re engaging in business practices of which many users are unaware and may not approve. The 2020 primetime Emmy Awards winning film The Social Dilemma takes you pretty deep down this rabbit hole and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you do. I just watched it again and honestly, it was a big reason why I recently completely deleted all of my personal social media accounts.

What’s the real price of free apps?
For the purpose of this post, I’ll boil it down to three words: privacy, data, and ads.

Most people have used Google to search the internet at some time, and probably have never wondered why they don’t have to pay anything to use it. In this June 2021 Bloomberg article, authors Nico Grant, Mark Bergen, and Naomi Nix report how the US Department of Justice were accelerating their probe into Google’s digital ad market practices, and this isn’t the first time Google’s been in trouble over this. This 2012 BBC article describes how Google had at that time “started to operate under a new privacy policy that enables the Internet giant to dig even deeper into the lives of more than one billion users,” claiming that “the changes make it easier for consumers to understand how it collects personal information, while allowing it to provide more helpful and compelling services.” Most of America’s state attorney generals disagreed, along with a leading regulator in France, believing “that Google is stepping too much on our right to privacy in its continuous mission to sell more advertising.”

In the case of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook had harvested the personal data of 87 million users, which Cambridge Analytica then used to provide analytical assistance to the 2016 presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

Wondering what else these companies might be doing with your personal data? In his September 2021 article in the Markup, author Alfred Ng writes “Even though companies like Facebook and Google aren’t directly selling your data, they are using it for targeted advertising, which creates plenty of opportunities for advertisers to pay and get your personal information in return. The simplest way is through an ad that links to a website with its own trackers embedded, which can gather information on visitors including their IP address and their device IDs.“ Companies pay Facebook and Google massive amounts of money to be able to more effectively market their products to you while you’re using their platforms.

In his 2012 article in Forbes, Scott Goodson closes with “... in this digital age we have sacrificed our privacy in order to access all manner of free stuff on the web. It’s a movement that most of us have come to accept. Or have we? I’ll borrow a quote I read on MetaFilter recently: ‘If you’re not paying for it; you are the product.’ I’m not sure how many people are fully aware of this sentiment yet or whether they even care. But the next time you’re browsing the web or enjoying a video on YouTube, remember that Google is watching your every move; because that’s the price you pay.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Getting to the root of the issue.
In a word, it comes down to capitalism. For-profit companies are exactly that - they’re out for profit, and to make as much money as they can from your use of their software platforms. Beyond government regulators trying to rein these companies in, I see two really good alternatives for people like us to get off this profit-crazy train: 1.) stop using their products, which is easier said than done, and 2.) find alternative platforms from companies that are transparently coming at this from a whole new perspective. Why would a non-profit company create and offer an alternative platform and forego the billions of dollars that could be made harvesting your data? Simple. To make the online community a better, healthier, and safer place.

When we started designing the Eos Community Connections Portal three years ago we decided to base it on the concept that everyone should be able to use it for free to find the resources they need and feel like part of an authentic community during challenging times. When we say free, we mean it - our privacy policy ensures that users’ personal data will never be sold and that we won’t sell aggregated user data; and we also won’t allow advertising in Eos. Developing a platform as complex and elegant as Eos and then delivering it to the world hasn’t been easy or inexpensive, and it’ll also take significant resources to manage it and develop future versions, so we’re going to offer inexpensive annual memberships in which users can post their own content on the platform and also access additional powerful features by paying a small and fair annual membership fee. Everyone will be able to use Eos for free, but if you want to post content, you’ll need to create an account and sign our user agreement. We’re on a mission to prove that authentic, healthy, and supportive online community is possible without greedily taking advantage of its members, and we believe that fair and transparent membership fees should be the actual cost of using the primary features of the platform. Eos is the Greek goddess of the dawn, and the initial release of Eos will usher in the dawn of a new kind of online community.

Coming up next: Key concept: online communities and freedom of information.

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Redefining online community Part 8: freedom of expression in online communities

Redefining online community Part 7: Seriously, most free apps aren’t really free.

Cal Loo

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