Event report

The thought-provoking presentations at this very fruitful conference were examining the different aspects of expression and pluralism in digital platforms. The speakers agreed that the censorship and the occurrence of fake news on digital platforms are negatively influencing both the constitutional rights and freedoms and the social discourse as well, not only in the Central-European region but all over the world. The issue is very trending because social media has become the most important platform for online discourse. Numerous presentations pointed out, that is absolutely not easy to answer the question: what censorship is? Most probably, censorship is like some kind of official control of the flow of information or some kind of ex-post verification of user-uploaded content. One thing is for sure: in the analyzed countries the censorship is strictly prohibited, and freedom of expression is protected on a constitutional level. During the conference, it was also emphasized, that freedom of speech and hate speech are closely connected to each other, that’s why social media platforms can be a source of committing crimes. In order to save the basic principles of our democratic society, legal measures should be taken. A number of other legal issues were also raised at the conference: copyright issues, the rise of AI (artificial intelligence), the problematic situations arising from the existence of deepfake videos, the ways of content moderation, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Some of the presenters told the audience about the relevant case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union too. It is clear, that in order to protect the constitutional rights and freedoms and the social discourse along with protecting the plurality of the society, legislative measures should be taken. A paper about the Facebook Oversight Board and the case study of the Zwarte Piet highlighted the fact, that the regulation or self-regulation of a platform cannot be effective if it does not take into account local constitutional traditions, a global decision on content simply cannot be made in case of content which is targeted to a local market. The very trending presentations highlighted, that a legal framework should be established in order to protect the fundamental rights and the freedom of speech, but it seems, that this regulation must be carried out on the regional level, taking into account the local constitutional traditions.