Italian Version – Translation by Paul Rosenberg
The new agoras are digital. Public debate is increasingly developing on social networks that have become central tools in the formation of public opinion. The horizontal nature of digital communication allows Internet users to access multiple sources of information and opinion, and conversely gives these sources access to the process of forming public opinion.
It is a revolution with enormous potential, which at the present time has also given rise to toxic phenomena of vast proportions, such as the widespread diffusion of hatred, slander and fake news on social networks, primarily targeting social, ethnic, religious, gender or opinion and idea-related groups, with methods that are more and more frequently becoming tools of political confrontation.
The reflection of this state of affairs is there for all to see. The news is filled with it. The British far-right riots of last August, to give a recent and striking example, were born and supported by fake news propagated by far-right influencers and groups on social networks. They spread the false story that someone – who in fact a British citizen – who was accused of serious crimes was an illegal immigrant who had recently arrived by boat. Illegal demonstrations called for by far-right social profiles with the slogan “Enough is enough” became riots, mosques and Islamic centers were attacked, there were assaults, and thousands of police were mobilized to restore order.
Beyond these sensational events, the waters of the karst river of intolerance and contempt are swollen daily by tens of thousands of tweets, posts and articles from pseudo-media that spread lies and create tensions. Internet companies either do a poor and paltry job, or nothing at all, to counteract the phenomenon. Posts of hate and lies spark flames and increase the number of interactions, making these spaces all the more tempting for advertisers, when they do not themselves actually fuel it, as in the case of the former Twitter, where lying as a tool of political struggle is part of the owner’s political strategy.
How can we counter the hate speech and slander that are rampant on the new tools of public debate as well as their use in political debate? In Spain, where the phenomenon is also an important element of political conflict, the answer they have given themselves is this: taking those who hatred and falsehood to court.
The initiative was born in our “friend magazine”, Contexto, which in addition to producing quality journalism, asked itself what to do about this situation. True to its full name, Contexto y acción, it decided to take action by deploying a specific tool.
This is how the civic platform Acción contra el odio was born, which aims to be “an open, collective tool open to citizens, to defend truthful information and a more just and egalitarian democracy, without racism or violence against women, minors, the poor, migrants and other minorities”.
The objective is to take legal action against politicians, agitators and commentators, mostly from the far right, who pollute the public sphere with lies, defamation and threats against defenseless groups, often violating the penal code.
The platform will have three sides – journalistic, community and legal – to act as a tool for collective action and is structured as follows:
A first group of journalists, activists, academics, readers and social media specialists will monitor the Internet and online media for possible crimes and attacks against the constitutional right to truthful information. Two young journalists will be given employment contracts to support this group.
A second group, composed of jurists and lawyers, will evaluate the possibility of filing complaints with the Public Prosecutor’s Office or with regulatory bodies against those who incite the violent persecution of minorities or the limitation of individual and collective rights and freedoms.
The honorary president of the platform will be José Antonio Martín Pallín, Supreme Court justice emeritus, while it will be directed by jurist Joaquín Urías, a former Judge of the Constitutional Court.
Starting next November, a monthly Observatorio del Bulo (Hoax Observatory) will be published, coordinated by the magazine’s journalist Gerardo Tecé, which will report on the calls to hatred and threats identified.
The platform will then engage a legal office that will help to file complaints with prosecutors, courts or other competent bodies, reporting slander, threats and other crimes that can be prosecuted ex officio, and will also take care of filing defamation complaints, which can only be prosecuted upon a complaint by the party.
The platform will also run campaigns to support citizens who oppose hate speech and lies, often suffering heavy consequences, such as those who have been reported for demonstrating against the far right or journalists prosecuted for publishing investigations or true and verified news. This also happened, in another context, to Contexto. We wrote about that incident here. Spanish laws, harshly criticized by the UN and the EU, offer the authorities many tools against the right to criticize and free demonstration, which inspired the recent package of liberticidal laws proposed by the Meloni government.
All this, of course, has a cost: the contracts for journalists, the legal fees, as well as the deposits that can be requested by judges in the case of private complaints. To start, Contexto hascalculated a minimum of 140 thousand euros and an optimum of 180 thousand, which also includes the fund for deposits. To provide itself with the necessary economic resources, a fundraiser has been launched. Contexto is used to this. The magazine, always free to read, does not sell advertising space, accepting only institutional communications, which however it receives in very small measure – unlike many right-wing or nationalist pseudo-media that are handsomely financed by local administrations as part of their institutional communication campaigns – and is financed by readers, both in the form of a general subscription and for specific journalistic projects. In this period the one that stands out is their coverage of information from Gaza, where the magazine has a journalist present.
The issue is, of course, delicate. The risk of seeking ethical justice or invoking censorship is just around the corner, but the democratic sensibilities and knowledge of the law of those involved act as a safety mechanism. The platform does not want to prosecute opinions, believing that ideas, however repugnant, are fought with ideas. However, when these become intimidation, threats and or direct invitations to violence, it is a question of turning to justice to not accept this impunity.
Spanish justice is another sensitive issue. Extremely politicized on the right, and prone to entering into political conflict, the Spanish judiciary is suffering from a serious crisis of authority. At Contexto, whose journalism has been following this trend for years, they are aware of the conservative nature of a significant part of the Spanish justice system. But they believe it is time to use the laws and courts in an alternative way, as an instrument of acción, convinced that, even if complaints are not admitted or are lost in court, they will highlight the contradictions of a system that criminally condemns web users who joke about the attack on Carrero Blanco but is extraordinarily indulgent towards those who sow hatred; fascists, propagators of lies, racism and defamation.
L’articolo A Platform Against Online Hate proviene da ytali..
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