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Monday, September 28
Global Free Speech

Australia ranks highly for LGBTQ rights. Photo: Tristien, CC BY-SA 4.0 A large Australian HIV charity which wanted to promote information about new treatments to its Facebook and YouTube followers has found its posts banned by Meta. The charity in question, the National Association of People with HIV Australia (NAPWHA), believe their posts were targeted by what they describe as a “loosely organised campaign of spurious complaints motivated by stigma” towards HIV and the communities affected by it (which include gay and bisexual men, other queer people, trans folks, sex workers and drug users). It’s a growing trend in Australia for organisations which promote sexual health and reproductive rights, and some rights groups fear that the social media teen ban in the country is just making the problem worse as platforms become more cautious about what they promote. When NAPWHA first launched its campaign in 2023 to inform people with same sex and other partners that new treatments meant they couldn’t pass on HIV, they found their ads were suspended on YouTube and Facebook. Sydney-based NAPWHA said that Facebook told them their promotional posts was rejected because they did not comply with their policies on ads about “social issues, elections or politics”. Eighteen months on, NAPWHA suspects that the campaign was subject to censorship via platform moderation and online hostility. They partnered with Swinburne University in Melbourne to investigate and last week published a report containing a legal and policy guide and a communications pack that provides practical tips and strategies for community-led public health organisations facing the same problem. Daniel Reeders, senior project officer at NAPWHA Learning, told Index at the report’s launch there had been an “absolute outpouring of stress and frustration” from small organisations facing a similar predicament. He said: “Platforms like TikTok, Meta and Google have walked away from their duty to moderate fairly and effectively, and we’re left with the wreckage of civil discourse.” The crackdown is part of a broader censorship of crucial sexual and reproductive health and rights information tracked by global NGO ReproUncensored all around the world. Founder and executive director Martha Dimitratou told Index they have documented nearly 600 cases across big tech platforms in Australia and globally, with more than a dozen new cases reported in just the last few days. Dimitratou said that Australia’s world-first teen social media ban, introduced last year and now set to be followed by about 20 other countries, could be to blame. Adam Finch, marketing, branding and communications coordinator for Brisbane-based nonprofit HIV charity, Queensland Positive People, said that he had recently had one set of the same posts approved one day but then censored the next. “I think we’ve just managed to dodge a bullet (but) in many ways it’s a matter of time,” he told Index, adding that they were starting to self-censor. Dimitratou said that Meta and Google must be held accountable and provide full transparency on why awareness campaigns were being restricted. “They must take immediate steps to ensure their moderation systems do not block lawful, evidence-based public health information,” she said. “Finally, governments must reclaim democratic oversight from the growing sovereignty of US big tech companies, enforce the law, and call these practices what they are: illegal.” Reeders said they were calling on Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the Australian Government’s independent online safety regulator, to “take a moment away from banning things” – referring to the new social media law – to “consider how platforms can be regulated to allow better access for organisations promoting public health”. Meta has been contacted for a comment. READ MORE

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Australia ranks highly for LGBTQ rights. Photo: Tristien, CC BY-SA 4.0 A large Australian HIV charity which wanted to promote information about new treatments to its Facebook and YouTube followers has found its posts banned by Meta. The charity in question, the National Association of People with HIV Australia (NAPWHA), believe their posts were targeted by what they describe as a “loosely organised campaign of spurious complaints motivated by stigma” towards HIV and the communities affected by it (which include gay and bisexual men, other queer people, trans folks, sex workers and drug users). It’s a growing trend in Australia for organisations which promote sexual health and reproductive rights, and some rights groups fear that the social media teen ban in the country is just making the problem worse as platforms become more cautious about what they promote. When NAPWHA first launched its campaign in 2023 to inform people with same sex and other partners that new treatments meant they couldn’t pass on HIV, they found their ads were suspended on YouTube and Facebook. Sydney-based NAPWHA said that Facebook told them their promotional posts was rejected because they did not comply with their policies on ads about “social issues, elections or politics”. Eighteen months on, NAPWHA suspects that the campaign was subject to censorship via platform moderation and online hostility. They partnered with Swinburne University in Melbourne to investigate and last week published a report containing a legal and policy guide and a communications pack that provides practical tips and strategies for community-led public health organisations facing the same problem. Daniel Reeders, senior project officer at NAPWHA Learning, told Index at the report’s launch there had been an “absolute outpouring of stress and frustration” from small organisations facing a similar predicament. He said: “Platforms like TikTok, Meta and Google have walked away from their duty to moderate fairly and effectively, and we’re left with the wreckage of civil discourse.” The crackdown is part of a broader censorship of crucial sexual and reproductive health and rights information tracked by global NGO ReproUncensored all around the world. Founder and executive director Martha Dimitratou told Index they have documented nearly 600 cases across big tech platforms in Australia and globally, with more than a dozen new cases reported in just the last few days. Dimitratou said that Australia’s world-first teen social media ban, introduced last year and now set to be followed by about 20 other countries, could be to blame. Adam Finch, marketing, branding and communications coordinator for Brisbane-based nonprofit HIV charity, Queensland Positive People, said that he had recently had one set of the same posts approved one day but then censored the next. “I think we’ve just managed to dodge a bullet (but) in many ways it’s a matter of time,” he told Index, adding that they were starting to self-censor. Dimitratou said that Meta and Google must be held accountable and provide full transparency on why awareness campaigns were being restricted. “They must take immediate steps to ensure their moderation systems do not block lawful, evidence-based public health information,” she said. “Finally, governments must reclaim democratic oversight from the growing sovereignty of US big tech companies, enforce the law, and call these practices what they are: illegal.” Reeders said they were calling on Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the Australian Government’s independent online safety regulator, to “take a moment away from banning things” – referring to the new social media law – to “consider how platforms can be regulated to allow better access for organisations promoting public health”. Meta has been contacted for a comment. READ MORE

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A large Australian HIV charity which wanted to promote information about new treatments to its Facebook and YouTube followers has found its posts banned by Meta.

The charity in question, the National Association of People with HIV Australia (NAPWHA), believe their posts were targeted by what they describe as a “loosely organised campaign of spurious complaints motivated by stigma” towards HIV and the communities affected by it (which include gay and bisexual men, other queer people, trans folks, sex workers and drug users).

It’s a growing trend in Australia for organisations which promote sexual health and reproductive rights, and some rights groups fear that the social media teen ban in the country is just making the problem worse as platforms become more cautious about what they promote.

When NAPWHA first launched its campaign in 2023 to inform people with same sex and other partners that new treatments meant they couldn’t pass on HIV, they found their ads were suspended on YouTube and Facebook.

Sydney-based NAPWHA said that Facebook told them their promotional posts was rejected because they did not comply with their policies on ads about “social issues, elections or politics”.

Eighteen months on, NAPWHA suspects that the campaign was subject to censorship via platform moderation and online hostility. They partnered with Swinburne University in Melbourne to investigate and last week published a report containing a legal and policy guide and a communications pack that provides practical tips and strategies for community-led public health organisations facing the same problem.

Daniel Reeders, senior project officer at NAPWHA Learning, told Index at the report’s launch there had been an “absolute outpouring of stress and frustration” from small organisations facing a similar predicament. He said: “Platforms like TikTok, Meta and Google have walked away from their duty to moderate fairly and effectively, and we’re left with the wreckage of civil discourse.”

The crackdown is part of a broader censorship of crucial sexual and reproductive health and rights information tracked by global NGO ReproUncensored all around the world.

Founder and executive director Martha Dimitratou told Index they have documented nearly 600 cases across big tech platforms in Australia and globally, with more than a dozen new cases reported in just the last few days.

Dimitratou said that Australia’s world-first teen social media ban, introduced last year and now set to be followed by about 20 other countries, could be to blame.

Adam Finch, marketing, branding and communications coordinator for Brisbane-based nonprofit HIV charity, Queensland Positive People, said that he had recently had one set of the same posts approved one day but then censored the next.

“I think we’ve just managed to dodge a bullet (but) in many ways it’s a matter of time,” he told Index, adding that they were starting to self-censor.

Dimitratou said that Meta and Google must be held accountable and provide full transparency on why awareness campaigns were being restricted.

“They must take immediate steps to ensure their moderation systems do not block lawful, evidence-based public health information,” she said.

“Finally, governments must reclaim democratic oversight from the growing sovereignty of US big tech companies, enforce the law, and call these practices what they are: illegal.”

Reeders said they were calling on Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the Australian Government’s independent online safety regulator, to “take a moment away from banning things” – referring to the new social media law – to “consider how platforms can be regulated to allow better access for organisations promoting public health”.

Meta has been contacted for a comment.

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Global Free Speech

The BBC clearly sees the value of television series That Mitchell and Webb Look. Marking the 20th anniversary of its original screening, the Beeb has re-released the series on iPlayer. But – and there is very often a “but” with these things – they’ve removed around 11 sketches from the BAFTA award-winning show. The official word is that these sketches don’t “work today”, which is polite speak for “they may cause offence”. The episodes singled out include scenes featuring a battle reenactment with characters in blackface, a contestant on a show wearing a burka and a lost tribe” in a garden centre. These sketches set out to challenge stereotypes, not to reinforce them; but 20 years on, this distinction seems to have been lost along the way. I’m a bit uncomfortable about this. I find it infantilising, to say the least. Can’t we trust audiences to make up their own minds, to switch off if they find the sketches in question unpalatable? Does the BBC think that we are just passive consumers, unable to disaggregate the mocking of racism from racism itself? These sketches set out to challenge stereotypes, not to reinforce them This act of censorship is distorting – of the shows, whose narratives and rhythms were built to include these sketches, and more broadly too. Conversations we were having 20 years ago have been erased, as if to suggest that they never happened. But they did! And with this erasure, the opportunity for thoughtful engagement and learning from our past is gone. “Let’s just pretend we were all lovely 20 years ago. It’s better that way” seems to be the message. Speaking as a minority myself, I find that knowing the nasty stuff that people said before – and indeed, still say today – is much more useful than pretending it never happened. This approach, I think, is also inconsistent. What it reveals is a cherry-picking (intended or not) of the groups that we can mock, and those that we can’t. Let’s face it, gender stereotypes are rarely deemed to have aged beyond the pale – if that were the case, we would have to wave goodbye to half the television made before the mid-2010s. Suppression like this sends a bad message to artists, namely that what they’re creating today may hold less value tomorrow. Or, even worse, that future audiences may deem them bigots – that Sword of Damocles hovering over the heads of any creative paying attention to the discourse of the moment. Suppression like this sends a bad message to artists The BBC’s decision reaffirms a broader trend. In 2020, Little Britain was removed from the iPlayer platform for similar reasons. It has since been reinstated – minus some sketches. Meanwhile, the UK’s arts space more broadly is seeing a retreat to the land of “safe”, as Index recently revealed in a year-long investigation into self-censorship in UK theatre. The BBC, it must be said, does remarkable stuff. The ongoing podcast investigation into the disappearance of US journalist Austin Tice is just one example. But this does not mean, however, that they don’t sometimes get it wrong. Chopping at That Mitchell and Webb Look is one example. Sure, the removal of the material isn’t the life-or-death story that Index often works on. Sure, Mitchell and Webb aren’t the faces of persecuted artists – they have huge platforms and agreed to the changes themselves. Still, one can’t help but think that the decision came from a place of conservatism, perhaps even fear. This is weak and dispiriting, indeed the very opposite of what enables creativity in the arts. We shouldn’t be encouraging this cultural timidity. Rather, we should harness culture and creativity as the starting points of a conversation about our here and now. That’s what the arts are for, after all. READ MORE

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