| Join Free Press and our allies in calling on tech companies to #ChangeTheTerms and stop the spread of online hate.
Friend,
Last week, 40 human-rights organizations including Free Press launched Change the Terms, a campaign urging internet companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter to adopt new corporate policies to disrupt the spread of hate online.
Within the same week, we saw a right-wing extremist mail bombs to at least 13 prominent critics of the Trump administration, a White supremacist murder two Black grandparents in a grocery store and the nation’s deadliest-ever anti-Semitic attack.
We wish Change the Terms wasn’t necessary. We wish its necessity hadn’t been underscored so violently. And yet, here we are: Facing one of the most brutal, heart-wrenching weeks in recent years.
Take a step forward: Tell tech companies to adopt new policies and terms of service that can disrupt hateful activities online before any more lives are lost.
The sad truth is that White supremacy is not new — but the slick online tools that allow White supremacists to recruit, raise funds and connect with a massive audience are a new innovation.
It’s easy to say “internet companies” have to change things, but the truth is that those companies are made up of humans — humans like the employees at Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce who rose up this year in objection to the use of their work products to fuel Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation machine.
At this moment, tech employees face a defining choice: Maintain the status quo, or change the way online services are accessed and used by those with hateful and violent agendas.
Tell employees in Silicon Valley and beyond to own their power and spark positive change by joining this effort to #ChangeTheTerms.
When we introduced the Change the Terms initiative last week, critics compared the effort to censorship and worried about the endangerment of free-speech rights.
But what about the free-speech rights of Sylvan and Bernice Simons, who died together in the same synagogue where they wed more than 60 years ago? Or great-grandmother Susie Jackson, who was killed in her beloved Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina?
Heather Heyer was exercising her free-speech rights when she decided to protest the White-supremacist “Unite the Right” rally that devolved into deadly riots in Charlottesville in 2017.
All of their rights to free speech — and their rights to live — were ultimately denied. And all of their killers were inspired on the web.
The internet should remain open and free. But the web services and platforms that live on the internet are different. They are absolutely not bound to make themselves available to those bent on ideologies of violence and hate.
Political correctness is irrelevant. This is beyond “right or “left.” It’s about stopping the spread of hate that poisons our communities, limits our future and takes the lives of innocent people.
Change starts with each of us, especially the people who develop and manage our internet platforms. Let’s change the terms online, and build a better and safer world.
Thanks for all that you do—
Collette, Jessica, Candace and the rest of the Free Press team
freepress.net
P.S. Sign the petition calling on tech companies to disrupt the spread of hate on their platforms. We need your voice to make a difference.  |
