Band 6+: You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Some people say that there is too much harmful content on the internet. They say the only way to make the internet safe is for the government to censor the content of websites. To what extent do you think the government should control what information is available on the internet? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.

People say internet is a place where you can find anything, and «anything» includes illegal and disturbing content, too. Throughout the entire existence of the worldwide web there has been attempts to find ways of protecting ourselves and especially children from «the dark side» of the internet, including attempts to make the censorship a governmental responsibility. I think that the control over the consumed content should be the users’ responsibility on one hand, due to the absence of the common agreement on the definition of harmful content between different governments, and on the other hand, due to the flexibility and complexity of internet as a tool that allows the producers of harmful content adapt and avoid censorship, and hence to become harder to be discovered for police.

If the government is responsible for the censorship of the content on the internet, in many countries we will face the situation in which, for example, LGBTQ+ issues related content will be censored due to the discriminatory laws of the country’s administration. This is exactly the case in Russia. Any non-heteronormative representation in the content posted on social media websites that are controlled by the Russian government may end with a lawsuit against the creator of such content.

Despite these restrictions on the portrayal of LGBTQ+ community in the Russian media, this type of content still exists. The creators of it, though, have to be very cryptic, in order to make sure that they are understood and discovered only by people who will engage with their work in a respectful and kind way. However, the same applies to other types of restricted content, including the distribution of drugs and other harmful illegal substances. For example, in Russia any mention of illegal substances on the internet is illegal, which led to the creation of a market for these substances on the «dark net» – a part of the internet that is much harder to reach for the normal unaware user and for the law enforcement, consequently.

In conclusion, I think that the control of the consumption of harmful content should be in the hands of the consumers themselves, because governments utilize different definitions of «harmful» in different parts of the world, and because at the end of the day the censorship never truly gets rid of censored content, making the creators of it adapt to the changes.