{"id":65984,"date":"2023-10-20T06:09:15","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T11:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65984"},"modified":"2023-10-20T06:09:15","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T11:09:15","slug":"the-westminster-declaration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65984","title":{"rendered":"The Westminster Declaration"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Westminster Declaration<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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\u201cOpen discourse is the central pillar of a free society\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms.<\/p>\n

Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as \u2018misinformation,\u2019 \u2018disinformation,\u2019 and other ill-defined terms.<\/p>\n

This abuse of these terms has resulted in the censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries all over the world.<\/p>\n

Such interference with the right to free speech suppresses valid discussion about matters of urgent public interest, and undermines the foundational principles of representative democracy.<\/p>\n

Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the \u2018Censorship-Industrial Complex.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

This complex often operates through direct government policies. Authorities in India[1]<\/span> and Turkey[2]<\/span> have seized the power to remove political content from social media. The legislature in Germany[3]<\/span> and the Supreme Court in Brazil[4] are criminalising political speech. In other countries, measures such as Ireland\u2019s \u2018Hate Speech\u2019 Bill[5]<\/span>, Scotland\u2019s Hate Crime Act[6], the UK\u2019s Online Safety Bill[7], and Australia\u2019s \u2018Misinformation\u2019 Bill[8] threaten to severely restrict expression and create a chilling effect.<\/p>\n

But the Censorship Industrial Complex operates through more subtle methods. These include visibility filtering, labelling, and manipulation of search engine results. Through deplatforming and flagging, social media censors have already silenced lawful opinions on topics of national and geopolitical importance. They have done so with the full support of \u2018disinformation experts\u2019 and \u2018fact-checkers\u2019 in the mainstream media, who have abandoned the journalistic values of debate and intellectual inquiry.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n

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The Westminster Declaration \u201cOpen discourse is the central pillar of a free society\u201d We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms. Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[120,33765,3717,2703,379,1426,33976],"class_list":["post-65984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-censorship","tag-censorship-industrial-complex","tag-disinformation","tag-free-speech","tag-government","tag-misinformation","tag-the-westminster-declaration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65985,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65984\/revisions\/65985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}