United Nations Works to Suppress Free Speech

UN Releases Guidelines to Control Social Media

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) agency has recommended that governments around the world suppress free speech online. A 59-page document that UNESCO released last week aims to create an “Internet of Trust,” which seems much more like a government-controlled world wide web.

The justification for this plan includes controlling “false information,” “hate speech,” and “conspiracy theories” from spreading online. Instead, the document promotes values such as “cultural diversity” and “gender equality.”

Using such buzzwords to justify infringement of rights that are normally viewed in democratic societies as inalienable is not new. Unfortunately, this strategy tends to be quite effective as demonstrated by recent COVID lockdowns and suppression of internet speech that posed inconvenient opinions to powers that be. The Biden Administration has largely endorsed such policies, as demonstrated by recent revelations about the government partnering with Big Tech to target certain accounts and opinions.

Nevertheless, there has been some dissent in the US Government. The House Judiciary Committee released a report last month that warned of the “pseudoscience of disinformation.” While it may not be news to Honest Media readers, this report found that this term has been “weaponized” by the “Censorship Industrial Complex” to suppress dissenting points of view.

The plan includes five steps to regulate speech. They are 1) conducting due diligence on human rights; 2) adhering to international human rights standards; 3) calling for transparency; 4) making information and tools available for users; and 5) holding platforms accountable to relevant stakeholders. Yet free speech on its own is a human right, at least under the US Bill of Rights and there are ways to promote truth without censoring permissible speech.

The report does pay lip service to democratic norms of human rights, claiming that this online monitoring should be conducted by independent regulators who are “shielded from political and economic interests.” Yet how can a regulatory body chosen by an intergovernmental institution be shielded from political and economic objectives that the UN itself expressly aims to foster? In fact, Article 29 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights states that “rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”

The UNESCO plan has also been endorsed by the World Economic Forum, which raises serious questions about its supposed independence from economic interests of elites.

The UN insists that this plan would actually “expand” free speech, as reported by the Epoch Times. Nevertheless, the Twitter files and other recent revelations have demonstrated what happens when governments partner with Big Tech to control what can be said on the internet, and suppression of free speech is the clear outcome. The avalanche of public private partnerships aimed at regulating the internet that ultimately suppresses speech is one of the scariest trends steadily gaining speed since 2016.