In an increasingly connected world, we must face a difficult question: do we censor our social media platforms from hate speech? And what, in that case, constitutes hate speech? Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and Instagram are just some of numerous social media platforms used by foreign entities to influence American voters during the 2016 presidential election. There is no denying the influence social media holds on public perceptions. We must decide whether social media companies have an obligation to monitor what is being spread on their platforms. Should this obligation be considered a moral service or a legal requirement?
In 2008, President Barack Obama became the first Presidential candidate to fully embrace social media for his campaign. His campaign forever changed the landscape of social media in terms of politics. Since then every politician has maintained a strong, active, social media presence. Recently, voters have said they prefer politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her use of live video streaming apps such as Instagram Live. As Professor Grygiel of Syracuse University said, “What she’s saying is, ‘Hey, develop these skills alongside of me and we will be a community, we’ll be a force. She’s not just saying, ‘Hey, support me, support me, support me.’” Politicians who have not fully embraced social media, such as Republican Ted Cruz, have seen that voters appreciate an online presence to build rapport and authenticity.
With the most recent issue of the Covington Catholic High School boys being falsely accused of inciting racial tensions, and chanting ‘build the wall,’ it shines a light on how fast social media is able to spread news that is believed to be true, and how getting a correction can be nearly impossible. We must also look into how a false obscure account was able to take a clip out of context and spread it wide enough via social media to reach mainstream media. Twitter banned the twitter account shortly after the clip came to light, claiming it was not from a domestic source. The account in question, @2020fight, which claimed to be run by a teacher named Talia, was viewed nearly 3 million times before it was removed.
The video got both liberals, and conservatives caught up in an uproar, with either side noting who they felt was behaving inappropriately. However, once the full video emerged, it showed that the boys were not at fault, and that there had been a third party, the Black Hebrew Israelites. However, the damage was done. Despite many news outlets attempts to make corrections, the impact of false information was undeniable. We saw the same thing occur in the 2016 Presidential election when the Russian government bought digital ads across social media in an attempt to further divide the political parties in the United States. By doing so, they were able to post controversial ideas and inflammatory images that incited conversations and anger from either party. Social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube failed to properly vet these advertisers, and allowed these messages to be spread on their platforms. According to Facebook, “150 million Americans had seen the Russian propaganda on Facebook and Instagram,” meaning that the majority of eligible voters could have encountered Russian propaganda on social media.
In cases where social media companies do censor and remove hate speech, we must also take a look at what exactly constitutes as hate speech. After Apple removed Alex Joness’ Infowars podcast from its popular Podcasts app, nearly every other social media company reacted by removing Alex Jones’s and all of the Infowars content on their sites. YouTube terminated his channel, and Facebook removed his page. However, we must ask if was this a reaction to Apple removing his page, or was this something they had been planning for a while. And while with Jones, it might seem like a clear-cut case of hate speech, sometimes it can be a little more complicated.
Twitter was recently accused of shadow banning prominent republican figures. The social media site had stopped promoting accounts which regularly tweeted right wing ideas, and would not autofill the results in the search function unless it was completely spelled accurately. This leads to a dangerous precedent, where social media sites are able to censor ideas simply because they come from a political party whose views may differ from their own. This could lead to censorship of ideas, and in my opinion is just as bad as spreading propaganda. By limiting the amount of news and resources available to people, we are only providing them with a biased viewpoint in hopes that people will only listen to that.
The spread of false news on social media can also lead to people losing their lives. In the summer of 2018, terrorists shared doctored images of children being abused on WhatsApp in India. With people continually sharing the images to millions of people, a couple of people were blamed for the abuse, and were subsequently attacked by a mob of 25 people and burned to death. This is slowly becoming a more common occurrence in India, and other countries, where false news and fake images are shared on platforms such as WhatsApp and WeChat. These applications are used by nearly everyone in their countries, and with an easy way to share, people continually share these messages amongst each other leading to the spread of fake news.
The Indian government estimated that 33 people were killed across 69 acts of violence due to false news and hate speech being shared on WhatsApp. WhatsApp did speak out about it and recently pushed out an update to make it more difficult to share messages, and added a limit to how many times a post may be shared. There have also been similar incidents in other countries such as Burma, where the Rohingya Muslim population was recently targeted after people shared hate speech, and other fake news. This led to many people being killed, and people being driven out the country. With Facebook’s ownership of WhatsApp, they are the main corporation at blame here, with the majority of the hateful messages being shared across their platforms, they have not been adequately combating the issue. Even after being aware of the problems for going on 4 years now, they have been dragging their feet in hiring qualified people to monitor the network, and control the spread of hate speech.
With Social Media becoming ever so prevalent in our lives, and becoming a utility for many people, we need to be making sure the platforms remain a safe, accurate place for people to go on. We cannot censor people for having differing ideas. However, we also cannot allow the spread of hate speech, especially after seeing the effect it has on people’s lives, and how it often leads to violence. Social media sites have a responsibility to monitor their platforms and maintain them to a high standard.
