World Economic Forum issues new ‘online harm’ classifications

The World Economic Forum (WEF) Friday published an official classification of “online harms” which they say should be censored by members of its Global Coalition for Digital Safety (GSDS).

GSDS members include Microsoft, British regulator Ofcom, Meta, Belgium, Ukraine, INTERPOL, Bangladesh, Australia, Singapore, Amazon, TikTok, and the UN. They also include the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a “think tank” linked to US intelligence agencies and globalist billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates. The coalition specifically thanks Hacks/Hackers, an organization commissioned by the federal government for censorship projects like ridding Wikipedia of vaccine criticism.

Last week, a working group of the WEF’s GSDS published a Typology of Online Harms outlining which content qualifies as “harmful.” While the WEF does not explicitly call for such content to be suppressed, it hopes the report will help “facilitate the creation of policies and interventions that effectively address online harms.”

Some content classified as harmful by the WEF includes widely prohibited content such as child pornography, privacy violations, and graphic violence. But other classifications may raise concerns for being too broad, allowing for wanton censorship.

“Technology-facilitated gender-based violence,” for example, is defined as “any act that is committed, assisted, aggravated or amplified by the use of information communication technologies or other digital tools, resulting in or likely to result in physical, sexual, psychological, social, political or economic harm or other infringements of rights and freedoms on the basis of gender characteristics.”

Similarly, the typology’s “hate speech” definition would classify any negative communication about a person’s “identity factor,” or even referring to them as a “pest,” as hate:

Any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of their inherent/ protected characteristics – in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, ancestry, gender or other identity factor. Includes dehumanization, which targets individuals or groups by calling them subhuman, comparing them to animals, insects, pests, disease or any other non-human entity. 

The WEF’s definition for “disinformation and misinformation,” while also broad, specifically mentions content which “interferes with elections” or is “misleading health information.” It also singles out content about female public figures, including political leaders:

Misinformation involves the dissemination of incorrect facts, where individuals may unknowingly share or believe false information without the intent to mislead. Disinformation involves the deliberate and intentional spread of false information with the aim of misleading others. Both can be used to manipulate public opinion, interfere with democratic processes such as elections or cause harm to individuals, particularly when it involves misleading health information. Includes gendered disinformation that specifically targets women political leaders, journalists and other public figures, employing deceptive or inaccurate information and images to perpetuate stereotypes and misogyny. 

Global “democracies” aligned with the WEF are already moving to legalize the suppression of such content.

In June, Australia’s government published draft legislation that would force social media platforms to suppress information deemed false by authorities. According to the proposed law, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) would be granted new powers to fine digital platforms millions of dollars for not sufficiently censoring “misinformation.”

Meanwhile, the UK’s Online Safety Bill would allow British communications regulator Ofcom — also a member of the WEF’s GSDS — to force private messaging platforms to scan users’ messages for “harmful content.” 

Currently, messaging services such as Whatsapp, Telegram and Signal use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to keep messages private and block access to others — in some cases, even to the companies themselves. 

But that would change with the Online Safety Bill, a piece of legislation introduced in Parliament in March 2021 and now going through the final stages in the House of Lords. The bill would force tech companies to create “backdoor access” to the encrypted messages and scan them for “harmful communications offences.” Harmful communications are sweepingly defined by the bill as that which causes “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress.” UK officials are claiming the legislation is necessary to crack down on child trafficking and pornography.

Ofcom would not need prior authorization to demand invasive scans of private messages, nor is the regulator subjected to independent oversight in the matter. 

Instead of banning E2EE altogether, messaging platforms might be forced to use a controversial technology called client side scanning (CSS) which scans messages for objectionable content before being sent to the recipient. This would necessitate installing hidden spyware on users’ phones.