Elon Musk wrote on Twitter this week that free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But a U.N. program is aiming to restrict it in potentially frightening ways. NTD’s Daniel Monaghan spoke with 2 attorneys—one who specializes in free speech, the other the author of a podcast called Coffee and Covid—about the implications.
The Internet of Trust is what the U.N. agency UNESCO calls its plan to make the digital world safer.
It would clamp down on what it describes as “misinformation,” “hate speech,” and “conspiracy theories” online. However, it seems the most important factor here is who gets to decide on what qualifies as hate speech, or a conspiracy theory.
“We’ve seen, throughout the years, that the conspiracy theory of today can sometimes become, actually, the generally accepted principle of tomorrow,” said constitutional attorney Erin Mersino.
