The Hindu Editorial Analysis- 13th January, 2022 | Current Affairs: Daily, Weekly & Monthly - CLAT PDF Download

1. Trust Deficit: The Imbalance of Power in Relations Between Tech Platforms, News Publishers is Worrying

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GS 2

Context: Competition Commission of India (CCI), the antitrust regulator has ordered a probe into Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google, over allegations that the search giant has indulged in “abuse of dominance in news aggregation” and forced unfair terms on digital news publishers.

• This marks a significant moment in a country where the fortunes of the news media industry have been on a downward path.

The Allegations

• The investigations have been ordered on the basis of a complaint by India’s Digital News Publishers Association, which has alleged that Google not only dominates the market for information but also abuses this dominance.
• Denying fair share of revenue: It does so, the association has alleged, by not providing a fair share of the advertising monies and by not providing adequate information.
  • It has also complained that it does not get paid for the news snippets that appear in ‘search’.
• Terms of engagement are “unilaterally and arbitrarily” dictated: The CCI will examine allegations that Google gives content publishers no choice, but to implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) standard or lose critical placement in mobile search.
• The Association had said a majority of the traffic on news websites comes from online search engines, wherein Google is the most dominant search engine and consequently gets to decide the share of ad revenues to be paid to digital news publishers.
• The imbalance of power and the denial of a fair share of revenue will be questions that the watchdog will be interested in exploring.

The CCI Order

• “In view of Google’s market position in the online digital advertising intermediation services, the alleged unilateral and non-transparent determination and sharing of ad revenues appears to be an imposition of unfair conditions on publishers,” the CCI noted in its order.
• The Commission also noted that the alleged unilateral decision by Google to not pay for the use of snippets of content produced by new publishers was also “a prima facie violation” of competition law.
• The competition regulator noted that news publishers seemed to be dependent on Google for the majority of online traffic making them dependent on the search giant.
• Accordingly, the CCI has directed the Director General (DG) to carry out an investigation into the matter under the provisions of Section 26(1) of the Act.
• The CCI will also examine allegations that Google gives content publishers no choice, but to implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) standard or lose critical placement in mobile search. The DG has been asked to complete the investigation within 60 days.

Similar Precedence in other Countries

• Australia and France have used their political capital in recent years to try and correct the enormous imbalance that exists between big technology companies that control news in the digital sphere today and the traditional journalism industry that keeps the wheels of news running, thereby also creating the basis for the conversations that are so important in a democracy.
• What was recognised by lawmakers in Australia, for instance, when they last year came up with a law that sought to level the playing field between big tech platforms and news publishers, is a condition that is true around the world.
• In India too, the power imbalance exists and has only gotten worse in recent years. 
• The news media industry, which invests in journalists, has struggled to stay afloat while the big tech platforms have become more and more powerful.
• The sustainability of journalism in the digital era has far-reaching implications, especially in a democracy. It has been quite evident in recent years that the industry has ended up sacrificing quality in its quest for more eyeballs, and nuance in the quest for more emotional engagement. The cost of not being able to get a fair value for journalistic effort can never be overemphasised enough.

2. A Quest for Social Consensus Against Hate Speech: It Requires Consistent Legal Implementation Over Time and Daily Conversations that Society Needs to Have

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GS 1: Communalism

News: On January 12, 2022 , the Supreme Court of India agreed to hear petitions asking for legal action to be taken against the organisers of, and speakers at, the ‘Haridwar Dharm Sansad’, held in Uttarakhand.

• About the event: During this ‘Dharm Sansad’ that had taken place between December 17 and 19, 2021, numerous speeches had been made.
• These speeches ranged from open calls to violence (“… waging a war that would be more gruesome than 1857” or “if you want to eliminate their [i.e., Muslim] population, then kill them”), to the economic and social boycott of Muslims (“… there is no Muslim buyer here, so throw that [Muslim] vendor out”), and to dog whistles (such as drawing comparisons to the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar).

Arguments for the SC Intervention

• No arrests in case of hate speech: Before the Supreme Court, it was argued that the reason why the Court needed to take up the issue was that despite FIRs having been registered in the aftermath of the event, no arrests had been made. It is clear that direct calls to violence — such as taking up arms and killing Muslims — are not, and ought not to be, protected under the right to free speech.
• Arrests where it wasn't warranted: Meanwhile, in the aftermath of a similar ‘Dharm Sansad’ in Chhattisgarh, the State police arrested one Kalicharan Maharaj, who had accused Gandhi of destroying India, and praised Nathuram Godse for assassinating him. No matter how personally distasteful they might be — do not, or at least should not, constitute illegal speech.
• Political patronage and ideological complicity are responsible for this contrast in action in two states.
• Absence of any legal or social consensus around what constitutes “hate speech”.
• To save society from normalization of violence: No society can survive for long when incitement to violence is normalised, and enjoys legal impunity.

Harms of Hate Speech

• Its is not simply restricted to direct and proximate calls to violence.
• It strengthens existing prejudices and entrenches already existing discrimination. For example, while anti-Semitism in Europe started on a daily level in the form of inculcating in society a “cultural common sense” about the Jewish people. This “cultural common sense” traded on stereotypes and social prejudice, and justified ongoing discrimination, social and economic boycotts, and ghettoisation, on a day-to-day level.
• The end result of this — which is the continued subordination of a section of society — can be accomplished without direct calls to violence.

Definition of Hate Speech

• Most societies define hate speech in terms of both inciting violence, but also, inciting discrimination, with exception to USA alone.
• Therefore, calls to socially boycott a community fall within most definitions of hate speech. This understanding of hate speech is informed by a long history where violence and discrimination have often blurred into each other, and where hate speech has not merely set the stage for future violence but has also been weaponised in its own right to further entrench and endorse inequality and subordination.

Key Problems

• Legal problem in India: Our laws — as they stand — are unequipped to deal with the challenges of hate speech. The laws commonly invoked in such cases are Section 295A (blasphemy) and Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (creating enmity between classes of people).
  • Hate speech, however, is most certainly not the same as blasphemy; nor is it captured by a vague phrase, “enmity between classes”.
  • Hate speech is speech that targets people based on their identity, and calls for violence or discrimination against people because of their identity.
  • The Supreme Court has gestured towards this understanding of hate speech, both in prior judgments, and in the ongoing case involving Sudarshan TV. More clarity, however, is needed.
• Hate speech will often assume plausible deniability — as has been seen in the Haridwar case, where statements, worded with the right degree of ambiguity, are now being defended as calls to self-defence rather than calls to violence.
  • Here again, the history of anti-Semitism in Europe is instructive. Over a long time, a number of visual and verbal cues were developed that everyone knew referred to the Jewish community, to the point where it was no longer necessary to take the community by name.
  • Dog-whistle mechanism: These included, for example, hooked noses and drooping eyelids, and a grasping nature, among others. Indirect hate speech of this kind is known as a “dog-whistle”: while it may escape the attention of an external observer, both the speaker and the listener know what — and who — is being referred to.
• In the Haridwar case, for example, veiled references about what was done to the Rohingyas fall within the definition of dog whistling. Any comprehensive understanding of hate speech is a matter of judgment, and must take into account its ambiguous and slippery nature.
• It reflects individual judgment making it difficult to define: If, therefore, social and legal norms against hate speech are to be implemented without descending into pure subjectivity, what is needed first is a social consensus about what kind of speech is beyond the pale.
  • In Europe, for example, Holocaust denial is an offence and is enforced with a degree of success precisely because there is a pre-existing social consensus about the moral abhorrence of the Holocaust, and the determination not to see it repeated.
  • Social consensus allows us to discount whataboutery, and also distinguish cases of hate speech from other forms of confrontational or agitational speech — that often comes from hitherto marginalised classes — which nonetheless deserves to belong to the marketplace of ideas.

Conclusion

• Achieving this social consensus is an immense task, and will require both consistent legal implementation over time, but also daily conversations that we, as a society (and especially, the socially privileged classes) need to have among ourselves.
• However, here, as in many other cases, circumstances have made it possible for the Supreme Court to initiate that much-needed conversation. For these reasons, its intervention in the ‘Haridwar Dharm Sansad’ case will be an important one.