Social Media Regulation Question
Social Media Regulation Question
"Should social media companies and big tech have the right or the power to silence voices on their platforms?"
Last week, Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump's account, and over the weekend quickly shut down the President's attempts to jump to alternate accounts including the official POTUS account. The president also faced a ban from social media giant Facebook. On Monday, it was reported that Parler has sued Amazon Web Services and in a statement the company claimed, "AWS's decision to effectively terminate Parler's account is apparently motivated by political animus."
Twitter's suspension of Trump, and the shuttering of Parler are just the latest issues that highlight the very deep divide plaguing our country and it is unlikely to change soon. "Internet censorship is an incredibly divisive topic right now," said Claire Cole, creative partner at Gamblers Pick, which recently conducted a study that found that a significant number of Americans felt that social media companies may have a moral obligation to censor content.
At issue is what type of content is being discussed, as posts encouraging or inciting violence was the second biggest concern among respondents, with 60% believing it should be censored from the Internet.
"Similarly, 59% of people believe certain content should be banned in order to stop the spread of misinformation."
One significant issue is that social media is still very much an evolving platform. Twitter began really as a tool that allowed those in social circles to essentially "shout out" to one another, but it has increasingly become a platform to reach the many of audiences. In the case of President Trump it has been used at times as his primary way to reach his supporters. While there is no denying that the President has posted information that is far from truthful, the issue is whether that actually warrants his being silenced.
"The original Internet was based on the premise that, if you don't like, don't look," explained technology industry consultant Lon Safko, author of The Social Media Bible. "For the 25 years the Internet has been available, all us early adopters to the Internet have always been chocked and pleased. That for one-quarter of a century, our government has not got involved, hasn't interfered with, and hasn’t imposed regulations on the Internet. The only time we saw our government make a historical intervention was charging tax on Internet purchases. Few remember when anything you purchased on the Internet did not include state sales tax."
Comments
Post a Comment