The dawning of social media has not only provided us with another means of communication, but has also resulted in a seismic shift in the way we ingest and process information.
At first glance, the seeming democratization of influence that social media allots to every user seems like it could only be good for our society, further edifying the values of equality we as a country pride ourselves on having. However, the virtual bullhorn that social media puts into everybody’s hands --- politicians included --- and their ideas, thoughts, and unproven conspiracies, has had and continues to have catastrophic effects on the very nature of our society.
The ease with which misinformation can spread and turn malignant has been greatly underestimated by both governments and social media platforms, and has fragmented our uniform reality into multiple conflicting ones, resulting in a worldwide psychosis. We now stand at a crucial moment in world history where we have to ask ourselves the question, ‘Do these social media platforms need to be punished for their inaction?’.
Now this question may seem counterintuitive, and contradict the very essence of social media. In fact, many who have been ‘deplatformed’ and banned from social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram have echoed the same sentiments above. If everybody has an inalienable right to voice their own opinions then why should they be penalized for it?
To many, the answer to this question lies in the premise that freedom of speech does not necessarily absolve a person from consequence, especially if that speech has the potential to spur violence. And it’s this type of speech that many people are now urging entities to regulate, not wanting these platforms to become breeding grounds for extremism and misinformation.
This opinion is especially fervent now, following the recent incidents of extremism we’ve seen sweep our country in the previous months. Incidents such as the failed plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan in 2020 by right-wing extremist group ‘Watchmen-Wolverine’, and the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The organizations complicit in these acts all, to some extent, abused social media to aid them in their actions, displaying the destructive potential that social media has and the relative apathy of the people that run these platforms.
On the one hand, the only way of truly remedying this issue for many is to penalize companies like Instagram and Facebook for their inaction, incentivizing them to develop a more thorough vetting process for information. And on the other hand, a great number of people are objecting to this idea, considering it an infringement of the most basic of rights. What do you think?