#nocleanfeed vs #nocensorship
I was at a DLC meeting last night regarding the planning of an upcoming event and the decision was made to try using “No Censorship” rather than “No Clean Feed”. Why? Well, Danu Poyner has a few good reasons and it basically boils down to this:
Saying you’re against the clean feed makes it easy for pro-filter groups and individuals to label you as pro-child porn (because the internet’s dirty and for some reason you’re against cleaning it up).
Saying you’re against censorship potentially makes it an issue of free speech. Poyner points out that this isn’t exactly a successful tactic either because most politicians don’t care about protecting civil liberties when they’re introducing legislation with a defined goal which they see as “for the greater good”. We don’t have a very strong libertarian tradition in our federal parliament and without constitutionally guaranteed (although it is implied with regards to political speech, according to the High Court) freedom of speech it’s going to be hard to appeal to some notion of rights to defeat the filter.
We need to show that the filter isn’t going to do what the government wants it to do, that it’s not technically feasible, that it’s a huge waste of money and that there are better solutions that are less censorious.
Or, as Mark Newton put it
- The government has failed to identify a need for this policy
- Even if there was a need, the government has failed to demonstrate that this solution is wanted by the public
- Even if the public wanted this solution, it won’t work
- Even if it could work, it’s too expensive
- Even if it wasn’t too expensive, it’ll be implemented poorly
- In the unlikely event that it’s implemented perfectly, it will enable child abuse
Thanks for the mention – it would’ve been interesting to be at the meeting.
I do think the framing of the issue is important, but so is clarity and at this point I think the #nocleanfeed tag has already been well established, for better or worse. Changing it now is more likely simply to cause confusion than anything else.
#nocensorship is also a bit misleading as it vague and could refer to anything, so it’s not clear that it’s actually the mandatory internet censorship issue in Australia being talked about.
Regardless of the choice of tag, I think the most important thing is to shift the debate from a moral standpoint of right/wrong to a debate about whether the policy being proposed is effective or not.
I still don’t think the core argument is about censorship or free speech. It’s about what the Government is proposing, why they’re proposing it now, whether it will work, what are the economic and social costs and whether it’s worth it. If we stick to that argument, it’s hard to see how the filter could possibly go ahead.
Saying you’re against censorship potentially makes it an issue of free speech. Poyner points out that this isn’t exactly a successful tactic either because most politicians don’t care about protecting civil liberties when they’re introducing legislation with a defined goal which they see as “for the greater good”.
Correct, and into the bargain many people who are anti-Mandatory ISP Level Filtering don’t care about the censorship angle either – they are against $44m white elephants.
Central to the argument around no censorship versus no clean feed is the question of recognition of the campaigns and branding around them. The EFA has always used clean feed as a variation on an analogy the media always draws to British Telecom’s Clean Feed filter – recent groups like the DLC have pushed for terms like no censorship because they don’t have the experience in the area in general to be able to weigh up the challenge to campaign identity benefit versus what they think would help make the concept more popular – an imaginary understandability problem.
I don’t mind what people call it, it’d just be great if they didn’t try to stop other people using the consistent, recognisable, search engine indexed terminology in favour of their own because it made sense to them the other day.
I agree with Geordie and Danu that changing the tag at this stage is bad from a branding point of view.
I also agree that by changing the name from #nocleanfeed to #nocensorship you risk focusing the argument on the censorship arguments, rather than the broader arguments.
That said, I actually do believe the freespeech arguments are a central plank of our objections. If the Government ever produces a proposal that is technically achievable and we don’t have a freespeech argument in our armoury, we won’t be able to credibly resist it on freespeech grounds. That is especially true, if we have previously denigrated the importance of the freespeech arguments.
Denigrating the freespeech concerns is dangerous for other reasons too – Conroy wants to equate freespeech with depravity. If we walk away from defending freespeech for its own sake, we simply legitimise his attempts to do that, and that is despicable.
In conclusion, even though I think #nocensorship better represents my own concerns with this issue, I fully support Geordie’s arguments in support of continued use of #nocleanfeed. Brand dilution and camp splitting at this stage is potentially extremely damaging to our cause and doesn’t seem to offer many positive benefits. Furthermore, it seems counterproductive to the proponent’s of the tag change own objectives since the change can only refocus arguments on the freespeech aspects of the argument, even though this is precisely the aspect of the argument that this camp wants to disown.
This is a great discussion to be having now! The Battle will resume when parliament and mainstream media return from holidays on or after Australia Day. It’d be good to have co-linear ducks by then.
Danu Poyner’s right. We may have to live with a less-than-perfect hashtag. But remember that the hashtag isn’t the policy. It’s a “brand”, yes, but there also needs to be a supporting catchphrase.
Danu and Geordie are also right to point out the practicalities. We’re not trying to change everyone’s opinion here, only the politicians’ policies. They in turn will be most swayed by the reaction of swinging voters in marginal seats — especially those who don’t understand the Internet, because I suspect they’re the ones who see the Internet as some filth-spouting sewer. Parents who do understand the Internet have already availed themselves of the NetAlert filters, or their own filters, or are taking care of their kids through, you know, parenting.
Whatever slogans are developed for the public have to work for that target audience — a completely different audience from the Twitterati trying to mobilise support.
Consider also that many of the people who will spread the word really have no clue about what the government policies actually are (tl;dr) nor how to do political campaigns. However they will repeat slogans, sheep-like, and stick badges on their blogs and join Facebook groups if we give them the right slogans. Not that I think the government cares about Facebook groups, but you probably get my point.
The more I think about it, the more I think the “expensive white elephant” angle is the key. $44m on filters? Heck, a quarter of that would double the AFP’s budget for child protection work! Hammer home the point that money is being spent where it’s least likely to catch pedophiles and least likely to protect children.
People won’t have any trouble agreeing that politicians are stupid and spend money unwisely. The essence of good propaganda is that it builds upon the prejudices that people already have.
My own term “Conroy’s Rabbit-Proof Firewall” was meant to engender ridicule like this, and it has been used a few times in Crikey. Another tag for internal use could be #cnutroy, especially as The Greens (from memory) have already used the image of King Canute in their own media releases — am I remembering correctly there? However the whiole “cnut” thing might be a little too closely associated with me personally. I’m too close to it to judge.
While still believing Geordie’s arguments should take precedence I suggest that a better tweak than #nocensorship would be #noforcecleanfeed since this addresses the Government’s stated objective head on and captures a good portion of the resistance to it – though by no means all. People can choose to emphasize no force or no clean depending on preference.
However, as I say, I think Geordie’s arguments still take precedence.
I don’t think there’s any pressing need to change the hashtag on twitter. The twitterati are already on board and we’re not finding a great deal of resistance there.
Elsewhere is the case is different. I know that the Brisbane Rallys were tarnished by the lack of public recognition of our cause or our slogans.
I think that #nocleanfeed is great for twitter, it’s a brand. As far as public facing goes, Jon is right, we need to solidify our free speech platform for the next time this happens. We need to start thinking like this issue will go away. #NoCensorship works better, but we don’t need a hash tag, so we may as well stick with slogans such as ‘No Censorship’ or ‘Keep Information Free’ or even ‘The Filter will cause more child abuse’ (explained in past posts).
I’m sticking with #nocleanfeed as an internal handle (and with twitter) but will switch my public branding to #nocensorship
#interestingtimesgang
Mind you one problem with #noforcecleanfeed is that it doesn’t really allow one to capture resistance to the optional part of the filter which is still a legitimate concern because of slippery slope arguments.
There’s got to be some way of capturing a “pro-choice” message in the campaign against the clean feed. I’m not so much opposed to the clean feed itself but the way it’s being implemented. The government can help families protect their kids but it’s got to be a choice to be protected.
I don’t mind so much about the hashtag as it’s something that’s being used quite well by, and for, the twitterers and bloggers. What we need to do is recast our position not as being against cleaning up the internet but in allowing people to choose how involved they are in the government’s offer of a hand protecting their kids from “unwanted” material.
Helping families help themselves? An appropriate solution? Perhaps taking the filters’ proponents’ arguments and turning them around. We want to protect kids from child abuse which is why we’d spend the $44 million on the AFP.
Choose your own internet?
Jon, do you think it’s feasible to make different arguments to different people? Business groups may be concerned about the crippling of the digital economy, small businesses may be worried about the impact on internet banking, parents would probably be interested to know that the filter won’t actually keep their kids safe, etc. Is it possible to diversify/splinter the message so much?
There is really a few ways of looking at how this issue plays out particularly at the different audiences being wooed. Ultimately if there isn’t broader community engagement the government will be able to introduce it’s censorship program. But looking at the different audiences the government is truly going for the lowest common dominator approach in terms of the message and name of program. It boils down to ‘cleaning up’ the Internet and making it safer for families.
However, using No Clean Feed is a snappy way of discribing a lot of information immediately through the campaign’s name. The trick though is to make sure that messages under the banner are simplistic and not academic. Say no to jargon or three letter acronyms. Government’s plans means mums and dads won’t be able to do x, y, z. It also allows those that see this as another diminution in rights and is more censorship can add this perspective.
The campaign as I mentioned earlier must look to mainstreaming. It might mean having to make things more ‘Mel and Kochie’ which is kind of horrible to think of but necessary.
@Sam Clifford: Complex messages can be “splintered”, as you put it, if there’s a coherent narrative to a campaign. This is getting well outside my expertise, but I suspect all promotional and political campaign have a shape that starts with awareness (“they’re doing something to the Internet”) through to clarification (“they’re doing this and it’s bad because of that“) through to a call to action (“let’s do this to make it stop”), and then a cigarette afterwards.
Different messages can be targeted to different audiences.
@Alex Schlotzer: “Say no to jargon or three letter acronyms” is the key point in your comment, at least once we take all the previous key points into account. I’d also say “Say no to ‘no’.” Perhaps (perhaps!) a positive message is better? After all, “saying no” is can be spun into “oh, it’s just a bunch of negative fear-mongers again”.
[shrugs]
Oh, and practical things. Tags need to be short, not just for Twitter but also so that if they lead the subject line of email messages there’s still room in a narrow subject-line column for the unique part of the subject to show, not just the tag at the front.
I really hate it when I miss a closing tag on an emphasis markup. I can thoroughly recommend the WordPress plugin “Live Comment Preview” to help avoid this.
Fixed that one for you.
@Stilgherrian – quiet right about trying to go for more positive messaging. And I’d also like to say no to ’say no’ because those campaigns tend to fail in the long term because of the burden of negativity. More positive campaign ’sloganeering’ provides positivity and energy, and a sense of doing some good because it’s positive.
Agree 100% about tags, which should be applied to blog ‘categories’ too