 Welcome to Civil Debates 5, I'm Michael Wheeler, and I'm here at the BIO Show, and maybe afterwards we might as well. Well I'm after them, they're led by the Video Center, and our chief producer across this theater. And once upon a time, like I, or co-editors, still are, remains to be seen, of our theater, our home, where we often had, we were writing ourselves, and we often had other writers writing for us on local and national issues of interest, and sometimes importance. And it was often a part to us, in the arts community and friends and family, that it was one of the few places they felt on the internet that they felt safe to have a conversation, to express an opinion, to refute an idea, and not be targeted, not have a turn into a shit store. And also, and this is the thing that we were particularly proud of, that people felt safe to include their name, their comment, their real name. And so that's really exciting to us, to be kept hearing this, and what we felt wanted to do as art makers, as performance makers, was to try to take those civil conversations, or civil debates if you will, and put them in a live space where we all had to be humans in a room together, having those conversations, and making them public, and then hearing back from an audience about how they felt. So with the theater center, civil debates began in earnest, and what I know is that civil debates series began in the theater center of the pop-up space, and there's Franco over there. We started the civil debates series in the pop-up space, and now this is our second in series that we're having in our new forever home. Great. So a little piece of business. First of all, welcome to our round. We're friends in our round here with us. We're the last three days, so you can go to our round TV, and if you really love this and want to actually just watch all of that again. There's a hashtag tonight, and so if you want to tweet now, or afterwards, a hashtag civil debates is another way to stay connected in this conversation. And most importantly, you guys, everyone here has voted on the way in where they understand all the resolution, and it's really important that we all agree to vote on our way up, because that way we can then tweet the hashtag whether or not any kind of opinion has shifted from home to the course of this debate. And that relies on everyone remembering to vote on the way up, because even one person doesn't, and the numbers are skewed. So that's on you guys. I'm just going to let you know about our creators and our moderators, and then we're going to invite them up onto the stage. So first of all, we have Shaysa Latif. Shaysa is a queer African Canadian writer, performer, director, and facilitator. Latif's projects have represented summer works, Halifax, Queer Acts, and NACM Ontario visible. Her recent work, Archivist and How I Learned to Serve Tea, was programmed as part of Why Not? Peter's Rise of Project. She was one of two 2016 cemented protégés selected by director Nadia Ross. Shaysa is an artist, producer, and resident at STO Union. She is part of the current Artists Development Program, DC Hub, and a member of the feminist art collective, Bonerville. Her upcoming work, The Rural Pump, is currently in development with STO Union. Don Michelle C. Bernard, aka Beth Ladonna the Left, is an emcee playwright and arts administrator whose practice spans across tier 11 and ranges across disciplines. Don Michelle is currently emceeing residents at Theatre Pass and Moroni, and playwright and residents at Liberty Tree Creations. In her role as coordination, coordinator of the ad hoc assembly, she works with creative platforms off and on stage for technically speaking artists. DM is a true believer. Brad Fraser, Brad, is an operative and one of Kenton's best known playwrights. From writing to directing Brad's work, spans through this medium, his plays have been produced internationally and have garnered several awards, including two trauma awards and two Governor General Award nominations. In addition to his artistic practice, Brad is a perceived serialist, with a male and a national host on public screening from Theatre to the effect of HIV based on his work. Abby Deschanan, is our moderator. Abby is a Toronto based lawyer with a wide range of experience in social justice advocacy, public policy, and law reform. Passionately devoted to defending and fostering civil liberties and human rights, Abby is a work with local, national, and international organizations to research, document, organize, and advocate for greater justice and equality. For the past seven years she has been the program director at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, leading advocacy and analysis in a wide range of issue areas including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, police powers and oversight, and the criminal justice system. And last but not least, our moderator today is Sarah Stanley, originally from Montreal, Sarah is the Associate Artistic Director of English Theatre and Interim Facilitator for Indigenous Theatre at Canada's National Art Centre, Artistic Director and Co-Director of Spyrocho, and Co-Director of Social Conscious Theatre. Sarah, co-founder of The Gateway Grand in Kingston, co-created women-making scenes in Montreal and dying in that theatre in Toronto and is a former AD of Buddies and Bad Times Theatre. Sarah creates the collaborations and the cycles at the NSC, she trained at Cole, Joppa Park, BFS, and Receiver of the Year, and M.A. for Queens. She teaches at Victoria National Theatre School in Queens. Sarah was recently awarded the Elliott Hays Award for Granite Review, which I had to accept on her behalf and she was not there. For her work on the cycle, focusing on the Indigenous body of performance in work in Canada, recent drugging credits, December Man in NSC, we keep coming back self-conscious and bugging Stratford Festival, upcoming Kill Me Now, RMTC, and NSC. I'll invite our invaders and our moderator up to the stage. Just a plug to say that Kill Me Now is written by Brad Fraser, but... Who has yet to win a GG? Before we start, I'd just like to say that the Theatre Center would like to acknowledge the sacred land on which we operate, which has been a site of human activity for thousands of years. Toronto comes from the Canine Kehau word, tecaranto, which could be translated as where the trees stand in the water. It's part of the traditional territory of many nations, the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, and the Anishinaabe, including the Mississaugas of the New Credit. This land was the subject of the dish with one spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and a Confederacy of Anishinaabe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. The Theatre Center strives to honour the history of this land by sharing their space with all people, those indigenous to Turtle Island, and those from all over the world. Thanks. So just to bring us to the debate at hand tonight, the statement be it resolved that freedom of speech is absolute and therefore must be protected online is where we're going to start, and hopefully where we'll finish with you guys putting your coloured chips in one way or the other. To give you a layout again for the evening, the first speaker will speak for seven minutes, followed by three speakers in a row who will speak by ten, and then the first speaker will get three minutes at the end to come back to their opening remarks, and then we'll open it up to you in the audience for roughly 20 minutes of questions. I'll come back to the specifics about that at the time, but if you're thinking about questions, try to formulate them in about a one-minute time frame and try to direct them specifically to one of the debaters in that time. If I see any reason to refer it to another person, I will use my powerful position in the center desk to make that happen. The reason for the microphones, just a reminder to everyone, is not so you can hear us, but so that it goes out clearly onto the live stream, and so during the question period, Mike's going to come up, take the microphone, and ask that you use it, even though you won't hear yourselves amplified. Okay, so once more. Be it resolved that freedom of speech is absolute and therefore must be protected online. We're going to start with Donna Michelle St. Bernard. You have seven minutes, Donna Michelle, to speak to yeas. Thank you. So be it resolved that freedom of speech should be absolute online, and being as extreme as I am, I gravitated to the word absolute, and we'll be holding on to that throughout my remarks. To begin with, I would say that freedom, which is not absolute, is not freedom and should be called by another name. That freedom that is gained by permission is not freedom, it's benevolence. That freedom that is gained through negotiation is not freedom, it's an agreement, and agreements can be changed. That freedom that has been fought for is precious and complicated, and that freedom that has been achieved is at best incomplete, and that it's an ongoing effort to live up to this value that we want to mutually share. The absolute nature of freedom of speech is perceived by many as opening us all up to risk, the risk of hearing the things that are said. I would say that we have an obligation, collectively, to move towards a more civil society, towards a better way of sharing this space and interacting in our differences, and that it's not possible to achieve a civil society through the concealment of our more uncivil elements, that to not know what people are thinking gives us no means by which to argue, to convince, or in the absence of that, to protect ourselves. And I'd further argue that to not understand the way that my existence is received by other people in the world ill equips me and puts me at a disadvantage to operate in that world. The freedom to speak does not come automatically with a guaranteed freedom of anonymity. So to be free to express oneself online is not necessarily free one from accountability to what's been expressed. It does not free you from the response of those who disagree or are offended. And it does not free you from consequences. It simply allows you to exercise your judgment in what you feel is reasonable to express. And in relishing that freedom, you should also welcome the response, the free speech of the people who don't have listened to your free speech. And I think that this is something that we can better cultivate, not for the benefit of those who revel in vile hate speech, although the benefits of free speech would be extended to those people, but equally for the benefit of the people who are willing or unwilling consumers of that speech. For anyone who's uncomfortable with being called a feminazi or being threatened with death or rape online, think about the person who has those words whispered in their ear at a bar and doesn't know where to say them, or who to say them to. For every person who reads something that deeply offends their personal moral values or makes them uncomfortable in the world, think about the cell phone videos of people being shot and killed by police in the street, a video that the police would not release, incidents that we would not be aware of. Think about Syria and the headings that it's illegal to tell us are imminent, because those are also things that are being expressed within the same freedom. And that's not to suggest that one is worth the other. In fact, it's to say that, hi, take your time. It's more to say that by being aware of both of these things or all the entire range of these things that are being expressed, we're able to be fully aware of our environment and the people that we share that environment with. We're able to share experiences that we don't personally experience. I'm able to say sometimes I don't feel safe and someone who has no other way of knowing that is able to hear that and choose to make me feel safe. Protection is still possible with freedom. Accountability is still possible with freedom, but more importantly, in a greater value, change is possible with freedom of speech. To lift up those things that we wish we couldn't hear simply because we wish they did not exist is to cripple ourselves in the effort to make that change. So it is in fact necessary to lift up the free speech of the things that we least want to hear. Thank you. In order that we can equip ourselves with counter-argument, in order that we can equip ourselves with empathy for that perspective and understand that not everyone that thinks differently than us is stupid or crazy or ill-informed, that the access to the perspective of someone who calls me a feminazi is not something I'm going to get over tea. But I do need access to that way of thinking and I do need to understand how to work in a world in which that exists, how to work in a world in which I'm characterizing that way and how to operate and move in a world in which I'm surrounded by people educated by professors who are propagating these views in their classrooms or people whose personal culture is impacted by their workplace culture who've mangled themselves into the shape of the world that they currently exist in and feel powerless to change the shape of that world into something that is tolerable, into something that is safe, into a place where I don't need to beg the protection of strangers. To me it's much more worth it to stand in the face of vile speech and to ask for allyship and to ask for others to say out loud I'm not with him, I'm not with her, I stand with you. To me that's worth it because it's worth it for us to all move together into a more civil society in which I'm not afraid of what you might say. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So we're now going to move to Abbey Deschman who's going to be arguing for 10 minutes in an against in the nays. Thank you. The resolution we're here to discuss today asks us to accept freedom of speech as absolute and therefore worthy of protection online. Freedom of speech however is not absolute and it's disingenuous and actually I think it's to treat it as such. Of course we need to protect freedom of speech online. Freedom of speech is central to a democracy. It does incredible things for a society. It allows us to tell truth to power. It allows us to search for better ways of communicating. It allows us to fulfill ourselves. It allows us to connect with our communities. But the fact that it has a central role in a democracy does not mean it's absolute and there are important limits on speech that act both through formal laws and informal community norms that are extremely important. We need these limits because we are a society that not only values expression but also personal safety, dignity, equality and justice. And these values too are worthy of protection. So in fact if done right limits on freedom of speech will support not only these other rights and freedoms but also the very things that we strive to achieve through meaningful dialogue. If we get limits on freedom of speech right we will bolster the very reason we protect speech in the first place moving us towards a freer, more diverse and more expressive society. When we talk about speech online what are we talking about? Well the internet holds so much promise about the communication the democratic communication means it could be. The Guardian described it this way. They said when the internet started it was a playful, creative and open space where anyone could connect and every assumption, every hierarchy could be challenged. Instead of textbooks and newspapers handing down fact and opinion from on high there was a blossoming of online communities sparky, self-starting blogs and Wikipedia to set the wisdom of the crowds to work. That is an incredible vision. We've moved somewhat away from that vision. As the internet has grown it's moved from our desktop computers to our laptops, to the cell phones in our back pocket. It's expanded from our social lives to our work lives to now our fridges, our printers our televisions and everything in between and as it's grown so too is it darker, disturbing more worrying side of internet expression. It consists of bullying, of shaming of intimidation, of harassment and it's often deployed not in order to upset existing social hierarchies and power dynamics but in support of them. We have threats, specific in general against individuals and communities. There's revenge form, there's child luring there's child grooming, there's harassment of individuals from anonymous people on the internet there's harassment of individuals from their exes and very specific cyber stalkers. In light of these in recent events we also have to now add fake news to the list of things that the internet has engendered. Misinformation and lies that are seemingly gaining more traction on social media than the truths and at least according to some impact of the US elections. The boundaries between online speech and offline repercussions are fluid. Abusers flip between online and offline harassment deploying online smear campaigns in the service of violence, intimidation and control. Online social media threats have shut down numerous schools across the country in the last month locking children in their classrooms and calling armed police officers to the hallways. We have multiple tragic cases of teens bullied and blackmailed by their peers and anonymous internet users who've taken their own lives. So we need and indeed already have laws to limit what we can say both offline and online. We have criminal laws. You cannot criminally harass someone through their email, through their twitter or in person. You cannot criminally threaten them. You cannot threaten to take their life or do them serious personal harm. The distribution of intimate images without consent is also illegal. These are extremely important laws that protect people. We also have civil laws. Victims can sometimes take their perpetrators to court. They can claim defamation. They can claim invasion of privacy. We have human rights laws, workplace health and safety laws. All of these laws are designed to protect us in specific spaces in specific ways that we are free to say. Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the breadth, scope and application of this law. Most of what I do is a disagree about whether the law is doing what it should be doing. But I for one would not like to live in a world where these laws didn't exist and I would not like to interact in an online space where they didn't apply. Laws are not enough. We also need community standards and norms that go beyond the threshold set by statutes and courts. Offline, we have community norms all over the place. Someone says something inappropriate. There's a reaction. There's community center. There may be individual center. There are consequences. Great traditional offline outlets for free expression and new ideas. Publishers, universities, newspapers. They exist so that we can be exposed to new ideas. But they are not required because our new publishers online should also not be required to be platforms for all speech. They should have the ability to determine what is acceptable in their communities and what they are not going to accept. This doesn't mean that very extreme forms of expression will not have a place online. They may. But it does mean that individual companies like Twitter or Facebook should have the scope to say that they are going to be expressing that particular opinion as part of this community. It's been difficult to translate our offline norms to online spaces. But more and more, those online spaces are creating their own forms of community guidance, are creating their own forms of community conduct, and I think we need to move towards that and not give up that work. So this is not to say that the emerging legal and technological solutions are all good. I'm going to go ahead and answer some of my questions about the online right bad. I've spent most of my career defending vile, abhorrent speech from government laws that we thought went too far. Nova Scotia's recent cyberbullying law that was struck down by the courts is a prime example of a law that targets online speech that at least in my opinion was clearly unconstitutional, clearly not helpful. Nova Scotia tried to ban cyber, intimidation, humiliation, distress or other damage or harm to another person's health, emotional well-being, self-esteem or reputation. Basically, anything negative you said about anyone was no longer legal in Nova Scotia. That was ridiculous, rightly struck down by the courts. In my experience, broad laws at restricting expression, those who are targeted tend to be critics of powerful individuals. I've defended local bloggers that criticize police, the mayor, the city councilors. They were hauled into police stations charged with criminal defamation. Students who created a Facebook post calling their principal the grinch that stole school spirit were charged with cyberbullying. And groups that are already marginalized get singled out for biased enforcement, as has been the case with LGBT porn at Kenneth's borders. But the fact that getting these regulations right is very difficult, very messy, and often tips over into censorship doesn't give us a license to throw up our hands and say anything and everything goes. There is no perfect foolproof solution. The boundaries of legal and social permissibility will always be and should always be contested and subject to change. Ultimately, however, if we get this regulation more right than wrong, we should actually end up with a more vibrant, productive, diverse and inclusive space for discussion. Right now, the Internet is far from an egalitarian space for expression. Women in minorities are disproportionately targeted and silenced. While known as immune from harassment, individuals from different communities experience online harassment differently. In 2014, Pew Institute did a survey of how individuals experience the Internet. Men disproportionately experience harassment through name calling and embarrassment. Women disproportionately experience harassment online through sexual harassment and stalking. A full 26 percent of women, 18 to 24 years old, were stalked online and 25 percent of them were sexually harassed. Similarly, The Guardian British newspaper did a in-depth survey of their 70 million comments and found that eight of the top 10 people who were harassed online were their women writers despite the fact that they have many more men. Closer to home earlier this year, we witnessed what was termed in Canada's first Twitter trial. Female reporters that tweeted on that were instantly beleaguered with hundreds of disturbing images, death threats and tweets that clogged their feed for days. If we don't act in response to these problems, we risk losing the open, creative, and possibility filled Internet that so many of us hoped for. So should we protect freedom of speech online? Absolutely without a doubt. But is that freedom absolute? And should we protect it absolutely? No. We need to have regard for the impacts both offline and online that speech has. And for that reason, this resolution must fail. Thank you very much. So next up for the next 10 minutes is Brad Fraser and he will be arguing in favor of. Freedom of speech is one of the centerpieces of democracy and allows all citizens the right to believe and say what they want. The vocal presence of the most marginalized or outsider citizens in any debate is the sign of a healthy democracy and allows all to share their beliefs with anyone who cares to listen. But thankfully it does not demand all citizens listen to every voice that offers an opinion. This is an important element of democracy because we know that conflicting ideas often lead to innovative or more widely acceptable solutions to challenges that might be found by examining the issue from, sorry, solutions to challenges then might be found by examining the issues from a singular point of view and conflict particularly when it is constructive although it need not be constructive to be effective leads to change positive or negative and sometimes advances humans as individuals and as a species. As author and academic Sarah Shulman states in the title of her latest work conflict is not abuse and the fact that we now live in a world that conflates the two makes the battle easier even more urgent. Free speech like most of the other basic tenants of democracy is not without its challenges and all of these challenges have been exacerbated by the appearance of the internet and the popularity of social media. It is now much easier to disseminate hate, misinformation and toxic material than it has ever been. It is also easier to stock, harass and threaten people more than ever before. Add to this the easy anonymity and non arbitrarily enforced on social media sites the herd mentality of certain people on any side of the gender sexual political divides and an increasingly less nuanced level of discourse and we've got a forum that can act with frighteningly negative power on a level history has never seen before but it must also be said that these same tools have been used to positive effect. People with like-minded objectives can now interface and collaborate with one another like never before. This has led to myriad innovative solutions to practical and political problems ranging from microloans in developing countries to the Arab Spring and while it has been made easier for commercial and state interest to monitor us it has also made it easier for any of us to record and transmit what is happening around us with equally effective immediacy. Like all society altering technology the internet and social media have a dark and a light side and humanity will not be shy about fully exploring either. Advancement has never gained without its comfort and only those of great privilege and little experience would expect otherwise. Free speech may be challenging but censorship of free speech for any reason in any form is so problematic that it must be rejected for the following reasons. First of all who is the censor? Whose values are being protected and whose are being censored? Each partisan group in society believes it knows what is right and has access to some truth that those who think differently don't have. The right censors people for not following the dictates of its selective and inconsistent religions. The left censors people for not following the arcane language and rules of its selective and inconsistent pedagogy. One attempts to enforce religious dogma without having read the Bible. The other attempts to force the ideas of Judith Butler without having been taught critical thought. Both will cite the dangers of certain topics being discussed sorry both will cite the dangers of certain topics being discussed at all with the pretense that discussion always leads to some sort of negative action despite a lack of evidence beyond the anecdotal that proves their points. Both will disguise their censorious impulses behind concern for the well-being of others. Given the simplistic binary left-right split of most societies nuanced discourse has been replaced by jingoistic and simplistic behavioral guidelines designed to exert control. So who then has the right to say which material is more damaging to society when both have proven willing to sacrifice individual rights to control discourse and the social agenda. I have in the course of my career been attacked by both sides of the spectrum. The right claims my work makes a mockery of their spiritual ideals and that my very existence as a gay man renders my work obscene, hedonistic, nihilistic and worthy of suppression. The left has claimed my work is unbalanced misogynistic, racist, homophobic and dangerous. Which side has the right to tell me or others what we can or cannot say or think? As an artist and a citizen I say it is better to have no rules than inconsistent or malleable ones that change depending on who holds the balance of political power. Another compelling reason to resist censoring free speech on the internet is because history shows such limits don't work. Censoring words doesn't make them go away. It drives the thoughts and ideas underground to resurface later. History also shows that when the tools of censorship and suppression are used it is invariably by fascistic regimes or governments that started by promoting and controlling the notion that silencing others because you do not agree with them and find their opinion or ideas immoral is an acceptable even admirable thing to do. Whether it's a corrupt socialist regime, Nazis and their sympathizers are right and left-wing western governments the state that works to control what its citizens can think or say is also the state that commits further atrocities on the people. Censorship is the gateway to dehumanization imprisonment and extinction. And finally censorship, suppression and disapproval are tools of corporatism and neoliberalism where progressive ideas are stolen, simplified and reframed to confuse the ideas of progressives with the desires of unfettered capitalism. In fact I would argue that the reality that we're debating free speech on the Internet tonight without addressing its role in the larger issue of corporatism indicates the powers of repression may have already won. This obsession with what we're allowed to say to one another in a democracy that enshrines free speech this need to keep agitating the same limited questions and ideas concerning identity politics without addressing their place in larger issues and there are larger issues is keeping us from affecting real change. There is a great deal made of the dangerous power of words how pernicious ideas can excite others to acts of terror or horror and these theories are not without merit and consideration. However one cannot acknowledge the destructive power of words and ideas without also acknowledging the constructive possibilities of words and ideas. If words can be used to destroy they have equal power to heal suppressing power of one invariably suppresses the power of the other. One must always consider how much popular knowledge we once accepted is true is now known to be incorrect. The fact we now know the world is round which craft doesn't exist as a punishable offense and left handed people are not the vessels of the devil hasn't kept us from assuming everything we're now taught is absolutely true. Like so many generations before us we are capable of making great mistakes in judgment and reason. We are also capable of rejecting ideas simply because they depart too much from accepted societal knowledge and more even though they often later prove to be artificial ideas. While I won't deny that there are dangers to interacting with the wrong people on the net just as there are dangers in interacting with wrong people in real time I find far too many of the supposed incidents of hatred being expressed on social media are often actually a clash of egos ideas and personalities that could have been solved by any one party being secure enough to walk away from the fight. A presence on social media is voluntary. One has the power to control who sees and responds to their material. There are indeed a great many people who are not nice but being an asshole is not against the law. Within all of this talk of hate and aggression there is also a whiny lament about people not being nice enough to one another and disagreement being perceived as a hateful attack. No one has promised a life without conflict or a life without offense. In fact it is often this conflict and offense that forces reasonable people to examine their beliefs and perhaps change them proving to be no longer useful. Retending a challenge to something you believe in as a personal attack has become an epidemic among some people and is dangerous because it minimizes the power of true hate by making all offenses carry the same weight. Learning to deal with these incidents is part of what being an adult is about and fighting back either intellectually, physically or philosophically is something everyone should know how to do. I do not believe in the death penalty the single person might be executed through malfeasance or ignorance is too high and too unjust. I don't believe in censorship or control of language in any way for much the same reason. Whatever anger, malice or questionable material might be spread over the net cannot be censored to save people's feelings because there is always the possibility that someone with a valid complaint or a life altering idea will also be silenced along with the unpleasantness. Profound ideas and creative solutions cannot be lost simply because people are worried about having their feelings hurt or because such ideas make some uncomfortable. Being sometimes uncomfortable or in conflict is an unavoidable part of being alive and a society without conflict is a society without change and therefore a society which is dead. Thank you very much. Okay, arguing against the proposal is Shaiisa Let's see, 10 minutes. Awesome. Hi. My name is Shaiisa Latif. I'd like to say my name again. But I say because I feel safe saying it here because you're not going to say anything awful back. I'm Afghan. I'm Canadian. I'm queer. I'm a child of immigrants. I'm working class. These are all part of my identity markers and my day-to-day existence. My name and your last name on account of three here in the space. One, two, three. Beautiful. I was looking up online like so much information and I was so overwhelmed by it because I was like, how do you organize this kind of thought and how do you speak to a room full of progressive people people who are mostly involved in the arts or have an understanding of humanity or do that kind of work around these issues, right? And how do we talk about it in a way that it feels like we're going to mobilize and do something about it where it doesn't feel as helpless and it doesn't feel that you're so distanced from it either to talk about the politics and just the states, but that what we're experiencing day-to-day and the sort of separation between being together in one space and communicating to each other face-to-face is really severely lacking on online spaces and we know this. I didn't come from a sort of school of thought where I think the internet is this magical place where it's meant for people to connect and to share ideas and maybe I'm going to sound a little paranoid and maybe my way of communicating is a little bit more personal than fact but the internet for me is a tool for control. It's a tool to make people feel a certain way and even when I was Googling all this information and how to know how do you discuss the internet how do you talk about the barriers that exist there I kept thinking is this the search that the other person can also be looking at is my Google search one that someone across the room has the same results and it's not it becomes very specific the internet starts to control where you're looking how you're looking what information you're accessing based on your interests based on your views and it starts to become more and more insular and I start to go out of my way to try to find other perspectives. I took a cab right here and on the way I I asked a man who was driving me what his experience was with the internet probably around my father's age my father doesn't know how to use a computer so it's interesting to have these conversations about the online world when he encounters racism on a day to day basis in real life based on what he looks like and how he moves about in the world and this man in the cab my driver was saying that his children now have to change their last names even online they have to find another creative way of expressing their last name because they feel unsafe and even just maneuvering in online spaces often times I feel that we are in public spaces together and we get to interact we get to be in this one room but I ask how many spaces do we actually get to take up on the virtual world and I don't think there's many spaces where even people of color and queer people get to exercise their freedom of speech in the way that is respected without consequence without threat without being told go fuck yourself go back to your country you have nothing to say my mother when 9-11 happened her name was Fatma after 9-11 her name changed to Lillian and the last 16 years I have witnessed the war on terror go from something that is face to face that you encounter with bullying and with names to something that is really translated online where the attack is so easy where you can hide behind the anonymous nature of the internet now it isn't just about having your feelings hurt it's about this sort of rhetoric that really really pushes for hate and ignorance to occur in this world using very simplified language that can be shared easily I myself as an artist oftentimes have a really hard time talking about discrimination and barriers within the industry that I work with because there's a form of silencing that also happens that there are consequences to speaking up consequences to having freedom of speech consequences for saying that something does not feel right does not look right does not make me feel good does not represent what I do and who I am has anyone been harassed online here? did you fight back? you did? did it make you feel better or worse? made you feel better? I thought it would make me feel better and I did I posted this something very simple I decided what if I use the same tactics and tools that the internet uses to spread messages of hate what if I took an image that's something that is of a loving nature of compassion and I wrote it without pointing towards anybody in particular not pointing towards a specific political message if I posted that how many times would it be retweeted how many messages would I receive that were maybe ignorant or full of hatred and I did it right after the election intentionally to see what the feeling was and immediately 45 people had retweeted my message but in my inbox on Twitter there's about 12 messages from people in America going telling me to go fuck myself that they're going to figure out where I live that I have no right to speak about anything at all and I'm living in the safety of Canada right to some degree and I can navigate based on what I look like and how I communicate in a certain way too that gives me privilege but in these online spaces there has to be some sort of need for moderation and if it's not through governmental law and if it's not through sort of a governing body then how can we create moderators in each one of these spaces online whether it's on Facebook you know sometimes there's community standard practices where even if there's a message of hatred you can report them but it doesn't get removed your only option is to block them and then your viewpoint gets even more and more insular as time goes on with Twitter you can also block them and they're the ones who ultimately choose if that message that was sent to you was something that you can't do because of a violent nature of a hateful nature and the only option again is to block it or to continue arguing so how do we make sure that the spaces that we occupy in day to day life in public spaces are safe but also the spaces that we use to communicate to one another to find a form of resilience to figure out a movement with Twitter it's an amazing amazing tool for freedom of speech obviously radical beautiful movements that have happened that have brought awareness to a political issue it's really important and it helps us to come together as a collective but what it also does is that it allows us to hide behind the online world the virtual world and doesn't allow us to communicate face to face so what I'm asking is not only for moderation and for accountability and for these places that out of time freedom of speech is connected to marketing to corporate ideals to corporate marketing that it's always attached to some sort of position of power then maybe our form is to kind of unplug as well as moderating to kind of detach ourselves from that world too because it has become very very dangerous and sometimes these people are called trolls right I don't think they're trolls they're people which is far more terrifying and what do you do when you have to humanize people that often dehumanize you in these spaces right and to think how much disenfranchisement has happened and the amount of fear that has occurred that the only way to be heard is to lash out is to go after people is to take up a space that was meant perhaps to bring people together as a way that is separating can you say your name one last time in this space Shaiz Latif sure private messaging did that work for you beautiful then beautiful and I'm not representative of all the cases for sure and sometimes you have the space to like do it and argue back and to make that time and sometimes when you have certain identity markers and you're navigating through the day to day you're like wow now online there's a whole other battle of existence as well thank you Donna Michelle you've got three minutes to rebut all that you've heard thus far go indeed so I think I have maybe just two over arching points that I'll make in excruciating detail first I want to say that most of the things most of the problems that we hope to address through limitations to freedom of speech are not freedom of speech problems we have a problem with aging lawmakers who don't understand what a Twitter is and therefore are unable to adjudicate cases that involve anything happening on the Twitters we have a culture of misogyny, racism and intolerance that is not about free speech it's about the culture and that is not a free speech problem shouldn't have a free speech solution we have a problem of nefarious corporate acts of intrusion and control that is not a free speech problem and those problems addressing them through free speech addressing them through talking less about them diverts us from dealing with the actual sensual issues and we have a problem with vaguely worded laws in Canada and in particular with the word reasonable there is so much and means so little and I came in here I started off the top and said some super cute thing about how we all want freedom I didn't ask anybody, I made that assumption for you all that that's a value that we all want and so similarly I think that like when we say violent abhorrent comments I think that you and I think we're talking about the same comments we make that assumption because we're here in this space together and because you're a nice lady and I am also I'm also a nice lady but for all you know I may think it's violent abhorrent to protest Nambla and that may be what I mean when I say those things so the point is that there will always be an arbiter and things that happen within reason or things that are reasonably considered hate speech by a reasonable person it's predicated on our mutual agreement about who is a reasonable person and what is reasonable so I guess the main thing I want to tell you is if someone has to exercise judgment over what is reasonable appropriate or safe I can't trust you because I don't know you and when spaces are moderated when you say spaces need to be moderated I want you to know that when I'm in a moderated space I am being moderated and I think freedom of speech has to be absolute in order to protect my right to speak about whatever violent terrible thing I want to speak about and you're right to hear it and tell me to shut the hell up thank you wow thank you so much we're getting some water the gentleman going to get the water Brad Fraser and to his right Donna Michelle both having argued for absolute freedom of speech and arguing against to my direct right Abby Deschman and to my far right the chief arguing against online absolute freedom of speech so we're now going to open up to you all to ask your questions again I'd ask on two as we work through changing our minds or being resolute in our ideas above the central question of absolute freedom of speech online must be protected so I open up to floor and read give this a whirl so mine is directed to Abby and it's kind of with regards to what you said in your robot at the end it's Donna Michelle or so if we take the example of fake news or misinformation I guess I'm just wondering how you feel like what's the difference between freedom of speech as opposed to the absorption of speech so and this speaks again I think to what you were getting at Donna Michelle which was what's the difference and I guess like even within the eyes of the law between my right to speak and how you would enforce anything upon that and how you would and how you would separate anything you might enforce upon how people choose to absorb that speech because I think there's a fundamental difference between I'm losing my train of thought I'm sorry I think there's a fundamental difference between someone's to say something and have it be factual or non-factual but like how would we if not censor that the difference between censoring and making someone more accountability which I think are more accountable I think a lot of what we're talking about with regards to online specifically is that there's a lack of accountability but I guess that two part question is just the difference between what actually would be censorship and what actually would be just holding people accountable I can do my best so I think my vision of regulating speech is larger than just censorship so I do think there would be a problem if there was some grand internet censor saying this is true this is not true you shall say this you shall not say this that's very scary to me but what I think we need to examine more however is the various platforms we're using and what type of information gets promoted to people what type of information gets shared out to people what type of information makes profit for individuals and what incentives we're creating and then challenging some of those structures so saying you cannot profit from click bait titles and we're going to pull that ability back from you which is what Facebook is now proposing to do or if you're going to put forward this information you need to be clear about what you're doing it for who you are and where the money is going those kinds of transparency mechanisms those are also called censorship by some and I am much less concerned about that type of regulation and those mechanisms will bring accountability hopefully eventually and I think we need to work on more of them so in offline life we have lots of accountability mechanisms to try and make sure that what we perceive as news is actually truth and sometimes they fail and sometimes they have repercussions I think we're still developing those online but I think we need them and so to the extent that you see that as regulation of speech I say yes we do need to create the space to say you are allowed to put this forward into this space and have it be broadcast and you're not allowed to do it with other information I don't know you have to ask I'm very nervous when I'm hearing these things because it seems to me I guess we have to speak into a mic for the thing whose job is it to decide whether what you're reading is real or not who's going to decide what is real news and what is not news and we don't get real news from our corporate media we don't get real news from any of our mainstream media sources so where does your own personal responsibility fall into this to do due diligence and look at what these things are and I know it can be hard because we live in a crazy world where satire is recognized now particularly online but when we talk about you have to identify clickbait I think we have to teach people to do that themselves and I think there's a question of personal accountability that gets thrown out in these conversations from time to time I guess the second part of that question was meaning to direct towards his rebuttal there it's like you're talking about the accountability do you think and like Don and Michelle said a lot of the things we're talking about aren't necessarily freedom of speech it's people's absorption of freedom of speech so I guess to give you another opportunity like is there something you see that can be done about like he's saying that people are held accountable to or given the opportunity to have the tools to form their own opinion that they can be held accountable for so for sure I agree we need way more media literacy and I agree people should themselves be responsible for digging into the truth of what they're reading and the truth of what they're tweeting but I think it is unrealistic to expect every single person to rigorously fact check every single thing we read like that is because we need to gain way more information than we have time to rigorously fact check and most of us don't have the time the resources or the education to be able to do that most newspapers right now do not have the time or education or resources to be able to rigorously fact check every single internet story that's out there so they're not doing their job we shouldn't do our job I think we do have a responsibility to try but I'm also saying I don't think it's realistic to build a society where we have to identify the truth of everything we read and we don't have any societal mechanisms to try and help us filter that it's not to say we shouldn't be skeptical but it is to say that if we're living in a world where every single thing we read is up for radical reinterpretation if we can't count on any single source to be reliable which is where I think we're headed in terms of Facebook stories then we're gonna have a problem in terms of constructing societal narratives and figuring out what decisions we make because we just do not individually have the capacity to do that job for every piece of information that comes across just to remind everyone to do the process thank you very much is that it's answering to the question that is asked can I give the other side an opportunity to respond if that seems appropriate and I'll move forward to keep it out of the conversation and keep it within the conventions of this particular civil debate so is there another question from the comments my question is for Mr. Frazier there's a great Ennisville France line about how the rich and poor are can be imprisoned for sleeping under bridges and begging bread on the street and stealing bread that when you say that there is a degree of personal accountability required in all of these things that it's like those who are in command of power structures and those who are suffering under power structures are alike required to speak truthfully are like unconstrained by the French but if the French is more like a non-linear non-linear censorship then would not the voice that is already dominant continue to be dominant like Ennisville France like 300 years ago and the situation has gotten worse if not better in response to the re-rich v. poor so if there is if we are both equally required to sort through these things I think I understand the question, and I think I would say that yes, those in power always have an advantage on everything, those who are in the majority always have an advantage, those who are granted privilege always have an advantage, but I don't think that excuses any of those people who don't have those things from claiming them, from wanting them, from demanding them and doing from whatever they have to to achieve them, and that means knowing the world around you and knowing your place in it and being willing to challenge the people who are telling you that you can't say those things and as a gay, matey guy who grew up on the side of the highway in northern BC with abusive parents, it's a very difficult thing to do, but you know what, that's no excuse for not doing it. We do have to take responsibility for ourselves, we do have to challenge the existing paradigms and we do have to be aware of the rules that are stacked against us so we can find a way singularly or collectively to tear those down and change them, that's my answer. I'm pleased for Brad and Donna Michelle, I mean like I agree with you for the most part, but in our non-internet lives you know we have libel laws and laws that prevent incitement to violence, do you feel like you know when we say freedom of speech should be absolute online, do you feel like online should be exempt from those rules? No I don't, and I came into this with the idea that things that are illegal, I'm not challenging those necessarily, and what I'm talking about, I'm talking about free speeches that exist within our society and with our law at the time. Cool, okay, then can I? I'll just add that you are absolutely free, I'm absolutely free right now to say that I'm a murderer and I'm not going to go to jail for saying I'm a murderer, although I will go to jail for a murder, so my freedom to say that is absolute in real life as well. It's what you act on that the law generally applies more stringently to. Unless you're proposing sex in a park, in which case you can go to jail, as we found out this last week for suggesting it, no it's always been there. In that case, can I toss one more quick follow-up over here, what do you feel like needs to be enforced online that isn't enforced in, yeah, not online? I'm having trouble understanding the difference between the two. So can I do both a reply and an answer? Sure. Yeah, so I'm surprised that you're taking the law as it exists now as a status quo. I'm actually, I don't think you can do that and say freedom of speech is absolute. I have lots of laws that I think need to be changed in order to liberalize our expressive rights. I have laws I disagree with that I think are too restrictive in real life and online, but you should not, if you believe freedom of speech is absolute, you should not be okay with the current state of things, because there are tons of laws that restrict what we say all over the place. So I don't think that position is compatible with an absolute freedom of speech. And then in terms of what needs to change online, I think we're still developing, I don't actually think law is the answer, lawyers tend to think law is the answer to everything. I very rarely think law is the answer. I think we still need to develop more tools to empower users, to moderate their own communities. I think we are still developing codes of conduct online, we're still figuring out what that means, we're still figuring out that when Facebook bans new images, it also bans breastfeeding mothers and the aboriginal people, but somehow not Kim Kardashian, you know, we are still sorting out and contesting all of those boundaries. I think all of those need more refinement, more transparency, more publicity. And I think they will need to continue to evolve. So I actually think those spaces where we are figuring out what we say and what communities and what bans there are that are even further beyond the law are what needs to continue to change. Just a really brief point of clarity that I think people can say is a point of clarity. And I'll let you make it a greater length, they'll be really quick. If you've been given the impression that either Brad or I are fine with the status quo, then I can re-apologize for a lack of nuance and now express myself. Yes, for the purposes of this exercise, I did not bring the law into it because we had 10 minutes, that was the only reason. For the record, CeCis, if you're watching, status quo, not okay. CeCis is always watching me. Not okay. This is for, hello, this is for Abby and Shasta. Just to completely take us in a different direction. I see a lot of, when we're talking about free speech, I see a lot of conflation between the idea of social media, which are corporate entities, which may or may not have gone public, which may or may not be subject to whatever country's laws they're based on. And the idea of the internet as a whole. So, you know, this person's blog that they bought their domain from, like, GoDaddy for for like $3. So those are two really different parts of the web with very different readership with very different ideas and inputs and outputs. How, when you're talking and discussing about moderation, how do you bring in smaller communities, like smaller blog spheres, smaller personal websites, versus just talking about places like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever comes in the future? How do you bring the small people on the internet? How do you incorporate them? There are no small people on the internet. I am a queen on the internet. No, it's more like, for example, like NPR shut down their comment section, right? And there's online, there's other, you know, like media sites or other larger platforms that are starting to just shut down the way that they're interacting with their audiences and who gets to comment on one's stories. So there's that way of moderating it without going towards, like, policy and code of conduct. And then personally for myself, like, if I upload a YouTube video or whatever it is, like, I shut down the comments because I'm like, I don't want to hear it. This is my work. This is what I need to do. It doesn't mean that I want to shut myself up from the world. But it means that I think with each platform, as you said, they're all different situations. And then for us, like, just on a practical level, like on a day-to-day, like, in making that decision as to what we get exposed to is important as a form of, you know, self-protection and as a form of continuing to, you know, mobilize and have fine tactics and forms of resistance to fight against online abuse, like with your collectives as well. Like, I know there's power in numbers, right? When someone does something that is inappropriate or goes along the line of harassment, I know that there are people who would be able to support right away and to have this sort of, it's a mob mentality. Like, there's one mob mentality which is really, really dangerous, which we've seen everywhere. And then there has to be another word for mob mentality that's maybe more positive. That nurturing mentality. Like, something. So, again, I think it's like looking at all those tools and tactics that are continually being used on the other side of, like, that are kind of supporting hatred and ignorance and using that to advantage as a way of moderating and really looking at a way of responding that is not gonna be deeply damaging for yourself but also trying to be responsible and being supportive to the communities that you belong to. I don't know if that hopefully answered the question. Okay.