In an era when some people are increasingly calling for the Internet to be regulated, it is important to be clear that regulating speech online can have unforeseen consequences. This is especially true if those laws are passed with little understanding of their potential impact on the Internet. Such was the case with some of the recent data privacy laws enacted around the world, including the EU’s GDPR and California’s Consumer Privacy Act. These new laws are limiting the freedom of speech by effectively prohibiting certain kinds of speech and by allowing governments to use these laws to suppress the online activity of their critics.
These policies are also harming innovation by preventing platforms from collecting information on their users, which is necessary to improve their services and compete with incumbents. They are also making it more difficult for new entrants to enter the market by locking in current players and burdening smaller companies with onerous regulations. Finally, these laws are causing damage to free speech by censoring speech that is not directly illegal but that is considered to be harmful, such as when individuals are called names on social media or when racist or hateful comments are posted.
We need to experiment as a society with different ways of regulating the Internet that take into account how it is evolving. We also need to be more careful in rushing to pass laws with the potential to limit the Internet, and more open to looking back at the results of those policies before they are implemented.
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