Regulating violence online

Kerala just promulgated and withdrew an ordinance to grant the state far-reaching powers to regulate intimidation, bullying, insulting and defamatory content. This is a shift from traditional approaches which required the affected individual to approach the police. While social media is not specified, it appears that it is motivated by the rise of problematic content of various hues on several internet platforms. Critics have brought up the question of curbs on freedom of speech. Importantly, this law may be politicized and may arm the state with the power to suppress opponents and political dissidents.

In the face of criticism, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan has had to issue statements that press freedom will be protected. However, this is unlikely to be the last attempt in Kerala or anywhere else to regulate content and information. Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump withdrew Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that granted an exemption to platforms from liability for content posted on them by third parties. While this is not directly analogous to the move in Kerala, efforts to use legislative and regulatory approaches to moderate speech are unlikely to stop.

While these efforts may be motivated by genuine concerns around hate speech, disinformation and violence, or the urge to regulate platforms whose algorithms editorialise content, they risk empowering partisan interests to crush opponents.

But, while regulatory approaches are critical in thinking about dealing with offensive speech and disinformation, as well as platform regulation, it will take democracies worldwide a while to find the right balance.

A growing body of research is showing the importance of intermediaries in managing a whole range of questions with respect to technology in society. An intermediary is a broad term that refers to community-level actors such as local leaders, civil society organisations, and informal associations.

Intermediaries can embed the right values around tech, as well as support marginalized communities in making claims of the state through tech. Imagine a local leader helping someone file a claim through an online portal. Offline (and online) intermediaries (called stewards in some instances) can also play a role in mediating better and more empowering ways to share data.

Intermediaries have trust of the community. In addition to being bridges between citizens and the local state, they also perform many roles of community leadership such as dispute resolution.

How to do this? This is built on two pillars – first, working with civil society organisations who are at the grassroots, playing critical roles in enabling access for citizens. Working with civil society to embed digital literacy and act as ‘sense-checkers’ can stem some challenges. It requires building up the capacity of smaller organisations to perform this role. Second, we need to work with existing community intermediaries at both informal and formal institutions. They have the trust and goodwill of the people. These could be political intermediaries as well.

It is important to see this from the lenses of democratic values and citizenship, and inclusive governance. As Lakshmee Sharma and Kanimozhi Udhayakumar have argued, it is important to instil democratic and constitutional values in intermediaries not just the ad hoc capacity to respond to short-term problems.

Both civil society more broadly understood (philanthropies, larger NGOs) and publicly-minded corporations can play a role in working with intermediaries and building up capacities system-wide. State support through institutional linkages (for dispelling health misinformation, for example) may additionally be helpful.

Of course, this is not without challenges – offline intermediaries may have differentiated impact depending on the type of problem in question. They may be better able to stem some times of misinformation, quell rumours and prevent conflagrations; they may be less able to address the psychological harms from some types of content. Their political inclinations may lead to rent-seeking. However, as trusted and valued systems on the ground, they can play a big role in buttressing regulatory efforts.

(The writer is Founder of Aapti Institute)