FREEDOM ON THE NET 2021 The Global Drive to Control Big Tech India's Intermediary Rules were announced amid worsening relations between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and Silicon Valley. comply with a government order to remove the accounts of journalists and activists. Over the following months, Twitter faced police inquiries and a visit to its offices, threats that its employees would be criminally charged, and claims by authorities that the platform had lost immunity from liability for user-generated content. Throughout the spring, the government ordered Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to remove content criticizing authorities’ handling of a deadly surge in COVID-19 infections. Turkey’s new social media regulations came into effect in October 2020. Platforms with over a million daily users are required to remove content deemed “offensive” within 48 hours of being notified, or risk escalating penalties including fines, advertising bans, and limitations on bandwidth. The platforms are also required to appoint a Turkish national as an in-country representative or establish a local legal entity, which is then subject to judicial fines for failure to comply with legal orders to remove content. The law reduced social media companies’ ability to resist requests from Turkish authorities that are designed to further censor opposition voices, independent journalism, and nonviolent expression. Most companies have since established a legal entity, though some have promised that there will be no change to their content moderation policies. Similarly, Indonesia’s Ministerial Regulation 5, enacted in November 2020, places new takedown and registration requirements on a broad array of tech companies regardless of their size, including social media apps, content-sharing services, and search engines. Once notified, a platform has only four hours in “urgent” situations or 24 hours otherwise to remove “prohibited” content, broadly conceptualized as speech that violates any domestic law, creates community anxiety, or disturbs public order. Authorities have already applied existing laws to censor LGBT+ content, criticism of Islam, and commentary about an independence movement in the provinces of Papua and West Papua. Those not in compliance with the new regulation risk a range of penalties that include blocking and revocation of licenses. In addition 14 @freedomonthenet to human rights concerns regarding its expansive scope, the regulation’s tight removal deadlines raise the question of whether any but the largest companies have the resources to comply and thus survive in the Indonesian market. The deadlines also incentivize companies to deploy automated monitoring systems that often excessively or inconsistently flag and censor users’ speech. The Russian government added to the labyrinth of regulations that international tech companies must navigate in the country. A January 2021 law introduced new fines for websites and platforms that fail to remove content the state deems “illegal,” while a February law reinforced platforms’ obligations to identify and remove banned content and required them to coordinate with the federal regulator, Roskomnadzor, regarding content moderation decisions. The simmering tension between foreign platforms and the Russian state came to a boil in March, when Roskomnadzor throttled Twitter’s traffic over the company’s failure to comply in full with orders to remove information related to protests against the detention of opposition leader Aleksey Navalny. Australia and the United Kingdom introduced legislation intended to address concerns about online safety. Australia’s Online Safety Act, adopted in June 2021, empowers an eSafety Commissioner to order companies to remove content—vaguely described as image-based abuse, cyber abuse, cyberbullying, or otherwise harmful material— within 24 hours. By requiring such rapid takedowns and including unclear definitions of prohibited content, the law risks disproportionately affecting the legitimate speech of marginalized groups, including sex workers and educators, LGBT+ communities, and artists. The law also lacks accountability for how the commissioner makes decisions, provides little opportunity for users to respond to complaints about their content, and encapsulates a variety of different internet companies instead of differentiating obligations based on their size and function. The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Bill, which had yet to pass at the time of writing, also places the duty of care on content providers to ensure that their users are not exposed to either illegal or harmful content, which are not clearly defined. Misguided anticensorship laws The decision by several major platforms to deactivate the accounts of outgoing president Trump in January 2021 sparked numerous bad-faith attempts at regulation, particularly in countries where populist leaders have relied on the power of social media to dominate public discourse. #FreedomOnTheNet