When does supervision in social media become censorship?

By Nori Quist, Staff Writer

Almost all social media platforms censor their users to some degree, a fact that was made crystal clear by the numerous platforms that banned Donald Trump the day after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. Even a platform that takes down only the most hurtful posts and bans only the most dangerous people is technically a platform that is engaging in censorship. But how far can social media go with censorship, and how far should it go? Where exactly is the line?

Twitter has special rules that let world leaders get away with more than normal users because a tweet from a president or prime minister is newsworthy by default. However, world leaders shouldn’t have personal accounts on social media at all. These people are supposed to be representatives of their countries, and when they tweet on personal accounts, they are going completely over the heads of their administrations and could cause serious harm as a result. As for restrictions on the average person, the answer isn’t quite so clear cut.

Many establishments have signs up that say things like “no shirt, no shoes, no service” or, more recently, “no mask, no service” and of course, “we reserve the right to refuse service to ANYONE”. These signs emphasise that a private business is not the same thing as the U.S. government. Can someone be arrested for walking around without shoes on? No. Can they be kicked out of a McDonald’s for it? Yes.

Similarly, freedom of speech does not extend to Twitter and other social media. Like McDonald’s, Twitter is a private company and gets to make its own rules. Walking up to a police officer and telling them, “I hope you get cancer and die” is legal, but tweeting the same sentence at the same police officer could lead to a period of time spent in read-only mode, which means not being allowed to post anything, but being allowed to look at other people’s posts.

The real difference is that being thrown into jail has a huge negative impact on a person’s life while being thrown off social media has little consequence. And as more of life moves online during COVID-19, being banned becomes a bigger punishment, which should be considered when deciding what constitutes a good reason to ban someone. 

Except for world leaders, a bad reason to ban someone is who they are as a person. For example, ethically, there shouldn’t be a social media platform that is for white people only. Legally, it is ambiguous what social media companies can and can’t do. Even if the laws were perfectly clear cut in the U.S., a company could operate out of another country where there are different laws about discrimination. That means it is usually up to the companies to police themselves.

Beyond that, there is no possible way for a social media company to filter every single thing that gets posted. Looking for certain words to censor only leads to users making their inappropriate conduct more discreet with code words. The internet evolves too fast to keep up which means it is up to users to police themselves. 

If social media platforms could create safe environments, it would be ethical for some of them to censor to get to that point. As it is, social media should have real people monitoring the content from the most influential people to make sure no harm is caused and should have artificial intelligence lightly monitoring content from everyone else.

As internet activity continues to spill over into the real world, it is important for social media to take some responsibility over what happens on their websites and apps, even if they aren’t legally required to do so. They should have a sense of humor about certain types of posts, like facetious “I hope you die” statements, but should generally err on the side of caution. Social media posts are starting to get the power to cause real damage and it is primarily up to the platforms themselves to prevent that damage.

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