Secret Trade Proposal Would Give Facebook Free Reign to Censor by Algorithm

‘Facebook has long drawn ire over its tendency to censor users’ posts based on its opaque standards. But under leaked proposals from a controversial European trade deal, the social network and other online services could be granted legal immunity when censoring any content, as long as it’s deemed “harmful or objectionable.”
The measure is one of several internet-related proposals being advanced by the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), according to a leaked section of the agreement published by Greenpeace and the German digital rights blog Netzpolitik. The draft proposal, which is dated September 16, 2013, effectively guarantees online services’ ability to censor such content in Europe without needing to accept any legal liability or public accountability—whether that curation is done by a human or an algorithm.’
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