David Bromell - Regulating Free Speech in a Digital Age: Hate, Harm and the Limits of Censorship

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David Bromell was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) from October 2020 to March 2021. The Center is located in Bochum, formerly an important town of the old German mining industry, which is now striving to create new opportunities for businesses, culture, education and science. CAIS was founded in 2017 and supports projects dealing with social, political, economic and cultural changes through digital transformation. We are delighted that in the course of four years we have welcomed more than 60 fellows, junior and senior researchers, men and women from different disciplines and from various countries around the world. Additionally, we have financed working groups, conferences and other formats of scientific collaboration.

CAIS is to be expanded to a central institute for digitisation research in the next few years, employing seven full-time professors in four research programmes. The institute will not only be a place for innovative interdisciplinary research but hopefully also a source of inspiration for a critical public confronted with the societal opportunities and challenges of the digital age.

David Bromells project dealt with the so-called Christchurch Call that was initiated after the Christchurch massacre by Emmanuel Macron and Jacinda Ardern to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. He visited us at the peak of the Corona pandemic in Germany with the consequence that he was quite often the only resident on the premises at CAIS. However, this strange situation did not daunt his good spirits and certainly not his work ethic. We are happy that he was able to advance his project successfully, and we are even a little proud ourselves that CAIS could support him in completing this impressive book on regulating free speech in a digital age. David became a good friend, and we very much hope that he will visit us again under more relaxed conditions.

David characterises himself as a policy practitioner writing for other practitioners. But he is much more than that. In his writing his arguments are based on a profound knowledge of classical and modern liberal thinking with advocates like Mill, Popper, Rawls, Waldron, Fukuyama or Nussbaum. And he proves convincingly that they are not mere decorum but that their principles and insights are vital in confronting the pressing challenges of the modern digital world.

This is especially true for the issue David is dealing with because it is closely linked to the limits of state action as Wilhelm von Humboldt puts it in his seminal work of classical liberalism. Davids subject is the dissemination of online hate speech and the question whether and in which way the state should intervene to constrain this notorious plague of the digital era. Davids starting point is one of the most appalling atrocities connected with hate speech: the Christchurch massacre, which he was affected by as a New Zealand citizen.

The most natural reaction to this unbelievable crime is a call for forceful state action including against any phenomena that may contribute to the preliminary stages of such a felony. But David has a very strong and clear message here which is, in some respects, also brave. He recommends staying calm and politically prudent, even if this is not always easy when confronted with such shocking events. Before too hastily demanding far-reaching state intervention, he asks us to refer to the insights of classical liberalism and use a strictly interpreted harm principle as a fundamental guideline to justifying the extent and boundaries of state action. Against this background, David emphatically insists on the difference between words that purposefully invoke harmful deeds, and words that are used to express personal emotions: Yes, words can hurt, but they do not hurt in the same way or to the same extent as sticks and stones, knives and guns. Words are not triggers; arguments are not weapons. They are what we use instead of weapons. He quotes Sigmund Freud: The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.