Much of the internet of today is dominated by the big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon that use it to amass profits. The chapter looks at three ways in which their pursuit of profit arbitrarily interferes with people’s access to and use of the internet. (1) Big Tech corporations operate a version of the internet that forces users to yield personal data in exchange for ‘free’ services. The chapter explains why this routine harvesting of personal data is morally problematic as it forces internet users to choose between two elements of minimally decent lives: their privacy and accessing the internet. (2) Social media platforms are among the dominant online services today. They have enhanced opportunities for exercising human rights, but their business practices also limit people in the enjoyment of these rights. The chapter suggests several ways for improving the situation. (3) Some businesses lobby for ending net neutrality. The chapter explains why net neutrality is crucial for keeping internet access free from arbitrary interferences, and argues for a version of net neutrality that allows some unequal treatment of data that does not diminish human rights.

Chapter 3 makes the case for classifying five grey area examples as hate speech in the ordinary sense of the term based on the global resemblance test. We also argue that Facebook’s community standard on hate speech is ambiguous, inconsistent, and incomplete in relation to these examples, and so recommend specific reforms. Section 3.2 looks at hybrid attacks, which, like personal insults, target specific individuals, but, like prototypical hate speech, also attack the groups to which targeted individuals belong and, go beyond standard protected characteristics. Section 3.3 investigates selective attacks, which are derogatory or insulting words that refer to only a subset of a group or else to an amalgamated set of people who belong to multiple groups. Section 3.4 scrutinises reverse attacks, which involve words used by members of groups typically perceived as victims against groups more usually considered perpetrators. Section 3.5 examines righteous attacks, which we associate with attacks in pursuit of some righteous cause. Finally, Section 3.6 assesses indirect attacks, wherein the speaker intentionally uses a derogatory word to address or target someone whom the speaker knows or presumes to be not a member of the group referred to by the word under its literal or primary meaning.

Chapter 8 pulls together the various analyses and practical recommendations we have made concerning the two concepts of hate speech and deals with potential objections and lingering worries. Section 8.2 focuses on the ordinary concept hate speech and confronts possible objections to our normative conceptualisation. This section also summarises the many recommendations we made concerning how Meta (Facebook, Instagram) should amend and revise its community standard and authoritative internal policy on hate speech, and tries to allay residual doubts the company might have about these recommendations. Section 8.3 turns to consider the legal concept hate speech and deals with potential objections to our limited formal definition of the concept and our analyses of grey area laws including those that appear to fall between hate speech laws and hate crime provisions, and also denialism laws. In addition, we reiterate our guidance on how states can develop a coherent body of hate speech laws in the light of both national perspectives and international norms against hate speech, and offer some reasons why states should place special weight on the latter.

Chapter 5 seeks to orient the ordinary and legal concepts of hate speech. Section 5.2 uncovers various ways in which the ordinary and legal concepts of hate speech come together, including in terms of the kinds of speech they both count as hate speech. In Section 5.3, however, we turn to consider the potential sources of divergence between the ordinary and legal concepts of hate speech including the differing social functions or purposes played by the two concepts. Section 5.4 addresses the nature of the relationship and interaction between the ordinary and legal concepts of hate speech. Finally, in Section 5.5 we try to show why theoretical disagreements about the relationship between the ordinary and legal concepts of hate speech matter. In particular, we argue that uncovering these deeper disagreements can help to explain both the source of some academic controversies about the legitimacy of hate speech laws and the source of some wider public debates about the rights and wrongs of social media platform content policies on hate speech.

Chapter 4 defends classifying a further five grey area examples as hate speech in the ordinary sense of the term under the global resemblance test. We shall also critically examine Facebook’s community standard on hate speech in relation to its handling of these kinds of attacks, and make specific recommendations to address relevant weaknesses. Section 4.2 looks at what we call identity attacks. Section 4.3 investigates existential denials, namely statements denying the very existence of people identified by a protected characteristic. Section 4.4 scrutinises identity denials, by which we mean statements denying that certain people are who they take themselves to be, based on protected characteristics. Section 4.5 examines identity miscategorisations, which go one step further and attribute identities to people that do not match the identities they take themselves to possess, based on protected characteristics. Finally, Section 4.6 assesses identity appropriations, wherein people adopt elements of the identities of other people, based on protected characteristics, but without claiming to possess the relevant identities.

This chapter formulates the basic problem addressed in this book: how to understand the complexity of argumentation, that is, how argument and communication are entangled in human activity. Polylogue is introduced as a simple yet perspicuous term for renewing and advancing inquiry of argumentation in complex communication. The fact that polylogue cannot be dismissed is evident in examples of managing disagreement under polylogical conditions both contemporary (e.g., social media platforms) and historical (e.g., establishing congressional representation for the newly formed US republic). While recognized in practice, however, polylogue is theoretically dismissed by an analytic strategy of dyadic reduction prominent across time in the study of argumentation and communication. Even the remarkable theoretical and methodological contributions of the twentieth-century revival of the study of argumentation as a communicative, situated practice, do not yet make a polylogical turn for understanding argumentation due to lingering commitments to a paradigmatic norm of dyadic interaction. However, much broader considerations of how argument happens stimulated by this revival provide starting points for a polylogical alternative.

The emergence of Facebook’s suicide prevention algorithm has prompted discussion around whether social media platforms have a role to play in public health surveillance. Concerns have been raised about an entity that is not a public interest health authority collecting and acting on the private health information of its users, particularly sensitive data like an individual’s mental health status. Mental illnesses are still heavily stigmatised, despite continued efforts to normalise these conditions in some regions of the world. Depending on a user’s geographic location, the ramifications of the suicide detection algorithms generating false positives for suicide risk could have severe consequences. The present chapter continues this discourse by examining the ethical implications of Facebook’s suicide prevention algorithm from the privacy, legal, and cultural perspectives.

This chapter takes us into the realm of social media platforms and the key role of Arabic linguistics in social media adaptation to the communicative needs of the Arab world. Through the localizing of social media platforms and the development and implementation of language policy, Johnson examines ‘the process of translating and adapting software to a new language and cultural context’. Issues such as collaborative translation and crowdsourcing have been instrumental in transforming social media discussion in Arabic formats. Providing a rundown of key issues in the adaptation of social media technology to different language areas, Johnson contextualizes the emergence of language policy and practice relating to translation and localization of social media texts, and discusses issues of translation and transliteration that apply both generally and specifically to the Arab world.

Starr describes how we have became so vulnerable to disinformation in this digital era. Heargues, that, like analyses of democratization, which have turned in recent years to thereverse processes of democratic backsliding and breakdown, analyses of contemporarycommunication need to attend to the related processes of backsliding and breakdown inthe media – or what he refers to as “media degradation.” After defining that term inrelation to democratic theory, Starr focuses on three developments that have contributedto the increased vulnerability to disinformation: 1) the attrition of journalistic capacities; 2)the degradation of standards in both the viral and broadcast streams of the new mediaecology; and 3) the rising power of digital platforms with incentives to prioritize growthand profits and no legal accountability for user-generated content. Neoliberal policies oflimited government and reduced regulation of business and partisan politics contributed tothese developments, but while demands are growing for regulation, it remains uncertainwhether government can act effectively.