Terrorism and Dangerous Online Content: Exporting First Amendment?

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Ryan Goodman
@rgoodlaw
Does First Amendment stop USG from joining efforts like #ChristchurchCall to eliminate terrorist content online?

Dozens of leading democracies and #BigTech have joined.

Trump stayed out.

@mikehposner and I explain why "First Amendment" claim is flawed.

Terrorism and Dangerous Online Content: Exporting First Amendment?
First Amendment is no cause for US to refrain from global multi-stakeholder efforts to address dangerous online content. Christchurch is still calling.
justsecurity.org
10:07 AM · Mar 26, 2021

https://www.justsecurity.org/75514/terrorism-and-other-dangerous-online-content-exporting-the-first-amendment/

The United States has an historic opportunity to work with democracies around the world to address dangerous online content, including white supremacist terrorism. In 2019, a lone wolf live-streamed via Facebook his massacre of 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. In direct response, dozens of the world’s leading democracies joined with major social media companies to issue a call to action. The Trump administration, however, did not join them, vaguely referring to First Amendment concerns to explain its absence.

With the coming anniversary of the Christchurch Call to Action (May 15) and the Summit of Democracy, it’s high time to reconsider the U.S. posture. Whatever the merits or demerits of any multilateral effort to address dangerous online content, one purported basis for the U.S. failure to join such initiatives cannot withstand scrutiny. That’s the claim that the United States has a policy of refraining from supporting international agreements that would call on other countries to act inconsistently with the First Amendment.

One of us served as the State Department’s most senior human rights official and the other has served on the State Department’s advisory committee on international law during Democratic and Republican administrations. Based on our experience and assessment of U.S. practices, we question any assertion of such a general or consistent U.S. approach toward international agreements.

Indeed, some of the main cases cited to show such a policy, on further scrutiny, demonstrate the opposite: The United States takes a pragmatic approach often issuing statements that stress that its own commitment to an agreement do not run afoul of the First Amendment (and asserting carve outs for U.S. domestic purposes). At the same time, it supports the adoption of international agreements by other countries who apply these treaties in accord with international human rights standards. In bilateral human rights dialogues with countries like China, Vietnam, Myanmar and Uzbekistan, U.S diplomats have routinely urged ratification of international human rights treaties without referring to its own reservation relating to free speech. In these and other diplomatic exchanges, U.S diplomats constantly rely on this international framework, rather than the U.S. Constitution and laws. It makes good practical sense to do so.

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