Terrorist Incitement on the Internet

Abstract

The internet provides a platform for speech across national borders and allows users to communicate destructive information quickly, both on open forums such as YouTube and Facebook as well as on “darknets.” This symposium foreword examines government regulation of terrorist speech on the internet and suggests that understanding terrorist speech through law, culture, and contemporary media can help governments better prevent the spread of hate speech on the internet. First Amendment protection of free speech permits the government to censor speech that explicitly or implicitly threatens others and this foreword considers whether governments – local, state, and federal – should also engage in the censorship of internet speech that indoctrinates and incites people to engage in future terrorist operations. The symposium assessed the limits of legitimate government regulation of terrorist communication on the internet and this foreword introduces diverse topics such as applying the imminent harm test to terrorist speech, critical race theory and white terrorism, and the role of the material-support statute in holding private companies responsible for terrorist messages disseminated through their social media platforms.

Keywords: Symposium Papers; Constitutional Law; First Amendment; Free Speech; terrorism, internet, social media platforms, hate speech

JEL Classification: K10, K42