Sector-Specific Threats and Responsibilities for Protecting Free Expression

Free expression today faces a complex landscape of threats emerging from governments, private technology companies, civil society, and the news industry. While each sector plays a distinct role in safeguarding speech, each also contributes to censorship, chilling effects, and unequal access to expressive rights. Understanding these sector-specific benefits and drawbacks is essential to building a resilient free-speech environment.

The Digital Space

Social media platforms and other internet companies serve as the modern public square, enabling billions to speak, organize, and access information. Their low entry barriers provide a platform for marginalized voices and facilitate political mobilization. But with this immense power comes new risks. 

As Jack Balkin argues in How to Regulate (and Not Regulate) Social Media, platforms are “information fiduciaries” whose algorithmic curation shapes visibility and therefore shapes public discourse. Yet they remain driven by profit, not public values.

Regulatory proposals often overestimate how well governments can dictate platform rules without infringing rights. Daphne Keller notes in TechDirt that lawmakers frustrated with platforms’ moderation policies have few tools in their constitutional toolkit to force change, and many proposals risk chilling lawful speech.

Self-regulation efforts like Meta’s Oversight Board illustrate attempts to introduce due process into content moderation. Decisions such as Oversight Board Case No. 2021-001-FB-FBR and the 2022 advisory on sharing private residential information show companies grappling with safety concerns while avoiding over-censoring. 

But platforms still lack consistent accountability and often disproportionately silence political dissent, activists, and users from the Global South.

Government

Governments are both protectors and violators of free expression. When democratic institutions function well, laws can prevent platform abuses, guard against surveillance, and uphold civil liberties. But states frequently invoke security and public order to suppress speech.

The Article 19 analysis of the proposed Russia-backed UN Cybercrime Convention warns that overly broad cybercrime definitions risk criminalizing online dissent under the guise of combating extremism or “fake news.”

In the United States, legislative efforts can similarly threaten expressive rights. Arizona’s 2022 bill to criminalize filming police would have restricted public oversight of law enforcement and violated long-standing First Amendment protections for recording officers in public.

Government failures are also visible when protests move from protected expression to unlawful conduct. As Gene Policinski explains in his analysis of January 6, protected speech turned into unprotected violence once rioters breached Capitol barriers and interfered with democratic proceedings. 

Policymakers must therefore walk a careful line between preserving protest rights while responding proportionately to genuine threats.

Civil Society

Digital rights groups, academics and watchdogs are all essential for documenting abuses, analyzing policy, and holding both states and platforms accountable. Their work often forces transparency where neither governments nor companies are willing to provide it. Article 19’s critique of the Cybercrime Convention, for example, offers a rights-protective framework missing from intergovernmental negotiations.

Yet civil society faces constraints: limited access to platform data, political pressure, and resource disparities. Researchers may also unintentionally reinforce harmful narratives by reemphasizing misinformation in ways that prompt a governmental heavy hand in censorship solutions.

The Media Industry

The press’s role as a watchdog remains indispensable. Investigative reporting exposes government overreach and platform failures, enabling public scrutiny. But the news industry faces economic instability, politically polarized audiences, and disinformation pressures. Journalists themselves encounter increasing legal threats and harassment.

 At the same time, news outlets must recognize their own blind spots. Sensationalist coverage, failures to contextualize platform moderation, and unequal amplification of certain voices can distort public understanding of free-speech debates.

The NPR report on Meta’s $25 million settlement with Donald Trump shows how platform decisions can trigger high-stakes political disputes, reinforcing the media’s role in clarifying rather than inflaming public discourse.

What to do?

Internet companies can explore ways to strengthen transparency, follow human-rights-based moderation, and lower barriers to non-identifiable data for independent researchers and media. 

Governments should avoid overly broad speech restrictions and regulate platforms without compelling or prohibiting specific viewpoints. 

Civil society must continue rights-centered scrutiny and recognize its duty to push for global norms that protect dissent.

The media must sustain rigorous watchdog reporting while avoiding coverage that fuels moral panic. 

Safeguarding free expression is a shared responsibility. No sector alone can solve today’s threats, but they definitely each have the power to make them worse. The challenge is ensuring that every actor strengthens, rather than erodes, the foundations of open discourse.