Should Social Media be Regulated?
In terms of the aspect of user privacy and data, I think social media should be regulated. Although some may think that with regulation, freedom of speech is gone, I don’t think that is true. Freedom of speech or the First Amendment is to protect speech from the United State governmental oppression. There is nothing there on the amendment that says it is illegal for firms to censoring people off their platform.
Thinking back to our previous president, Donald Trump who used social media to share misleading information and to provoke his followers, he is a great example of why social media should be regulated. In this case, social media such as Facebook and Twitter did take a big step and ban him from those media. Questions that come around from the action taken by social media are if banning is the solution for harmful content and if that takes away our right to freedom of speech.
Today there is freedom of speech that enables hate speech. Although that is the case, freedom of speech does not mean free of consequences. The people who say harmful things or do harmful things will face consequences. If that means making someone angry and getting punch, etc so be it.
I guess the better question that comes up with regulation is if there should be more regulation. Today, social media do have some sort of regulation well some may see it as monitoring more than regulation. An example is platforms like Discord, regulation is important as hate speech does not belong there. I think hate speech does not belong in social media and if someone says that is taking away our freedom of speech then there should be consequences. If this consequence means social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook banning your account because of their action of being rude and racist then I think that justifies.
People like Donald Trump that use ignorance enable many others who look up to him to do the same. An example is calling the coronavirus, the “Chinese virus” is not okay. Things like this should be regulated as it enables people to think that racism is okay and for hate speech and hate crime to rise. If there were more regulations in social media, I feel like this could have been prevented. I think social media should be regulated when it comes to harming another group of people as those groups of people can come together and become a terrorist group. When mind alike comes together to spread hate, nothing good happens. Social media should be regulated to stop the hate going around. Although I know it won’t be an easy job, I think it’s necessary as some are abusing the power of freedom of speech while forgetting consequence is a thing.
