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Report warns that content filtering mechanisms amount to “pre-publication censorship”

 

6 April 2018

A report by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations has concluded that requiring internet platforms to proactively monitor or filter content presents a risk to freedom of expression. The report warns against allowing private actors to make such determinations, particularly due to risks of inconsistency and the primarily economic motivations of the enforcers. The report recommends that:

“States and intergovernmental organisations  should  refrain  from  establishing laws  or  arrangements  that  would  require  the “proactive” monitoring  or  filtering  of content,  which  is  both inconsistent  with  the  right  to  privacy  and  likely  to  amount  to pre-publication censorship.”

Further details and a PDF download of the full report are available here.