Madeline Valentine
mv598217@ohio.edu
In a digital age, it is nearly impossible to not own or come across social media accounts. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are increasingly becoming ways to keep in contact with friends and family as well as use as outreach for jobs. The reach of social media goes far and children are creating accounts at younger and younger ages.
There is a reason the percentages of cyber-bullying has increased in recent years and the number of young adult depression. It is easy for people to go online and say harmful words behind a screen of anonymity. Hate speech is also common to come across, a total of 64% of teens witnessing some sort of hate speech frequently in a study done in 2018. In that number, racism, sexism, and homophobia are the most common to the people of the survey.
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| Picture source: Getty Images |
So what are social media companies doing to regulate hate speech on their platforms? While it may seem easy to abolish this kind of harm, the problem for these platforms is distinguishing between hate speech and free speech. When making policy, they have to be careful they are not infringing on any kind of rights regarding the freedom of speech. An article done by research outreach states, "In order for this monitoring to take place, social media companies need to be transparent about the content that they are removing and make their data available to researchers and the wider public for scrutiny."
Many civil rights groups are calling for platforms like Facebook to do just this and claim that they are not active enough with dealing with hate speech problems on their sites. They have called on advertisers to boycott the platforms until these problems are better dealt with. AP news reported, "New companies have been signing on to the boycott almost every day. While some are pausing ads only on Facebook, others have also stepped back from advertising on Twitter and other platforms." Some of these advertisers include Unilever, Verizon and Ford, showing the impact the call to action is having. While this is not a long-term situation, it is still a move in the direction in combating hate speech.
With pressure on these companies, hopefully, they will turn a bigger focus on these problems and work on their transparency as they combat hate speech in a fair manner.
There's something to be said about what users can do as well, blocking and reporting particularly hateful users. However, I agree that this shouldn't be up to every person with a social media account.
ReplyDeleteIn many ways, civil rights groups are doing the best they can by calling for boycotts as social media makes a large part of its profit from advertising.
I too hope that they spend more time on this, however, I know it will be a long road. Transparency in what they decide is paramount. Especially in their definitions of what hate speech is and what is and isn't appropriate in our digital world.
Thank you for sharing your information and thoughts.
It is very unfortunate how much hate speech is on social media. I never thought about the difference between regulating hate speech versus freedom of speech until reading your post. Hopefully, more social media platforms will better their policies regarding hate speech.
ReplyDeleteHate speech on social media is a huge problem that affects many different people as well. As you stated in your post cyber bullying is a big problem with young children and teens and it can cause many kids to go into depression. It is also a problem for developers and social media managers because they need to find ways to cut out the amount of hate speech going on on their platforms. We can only hope that as technology advances that developers can find a way to limit or completely filter out hate speech on their platforms.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Maddie! While social media has proved to be so helpful for connecting with relatives and perhaps pursuing job opportunities, I don't think these positives come without a price. We're more connected with everyone now, even those seeking to be hateful towards us. Our personal social media accounts are now scrutinized by employers, adding a new layer of responsibility to be professional at all times, even in our personal lives. Social media has made many things in our lives a bit easier but has also complicated our lives as well.
ReplyDeleteEmily Walsh | ew845717@ohio.edu
ReplyDeleteMaddie - I really enjoyed reading your post. I liked that you mentioned the companies Ford, Unilever, and Verizon who have boycotted certain platforms by putting their advertising on hold. This stands out to me as significant because it shows that they value culture change over money and says a lot about their company values.
Hi Maddie! Social media has grown into such a prominent aspect of life from employment to distorted views of self value. People implement social media into daily lives so much so that we forget that it’s not ours. A social media platform is a company. Although I do not know the legal line between speech regulation and free speech of social media companies, I do know that the stakeholders for these companies can’t be ignored.
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