The Role of the Government in Regulating Information on Social Media
The modern-day blessing, social media are also doomsday machines. They have the capability of distracting, disturbing and initiating division among groups. The spread of misinformation has led to several injustices that were only due to people believing absurdities. People are easily manipulated and carried away by information associated with them. In the era of technology and social media, information can travel at a very fast speed (Grigonis, 2017). The paper aims to discuss the ways it is ethical to censor people’s right to free speech in social media in order to control the spread of fake news as well as hate speech.
It is important to understand that it is only an additional responsibility on the government or the responsible organization to regulate information on social media. The first responsibility and the most ethical approach would be social media taking responsibility for the fake news. Therefore, in the first place, the government would not require to play any role if social media takes control themselves. If the government is adequately potent to control information on social media, social media companies as well my put an effort to filter information before releasing information to the audiences (Prajuli, 2018). It is essential to understand that the media has very less role to play as political propaganda. There is no one precisely who can be held responsible or fake news. Ensuring its contents will not be a violation of freedom of speech. Since social media is highly capable of various things, it may even regulate media precisely without the interference of government. The social media needs to be aware of its power and the consequences, considering the aspects requires to initiate measures that would prevent spreading fake news.
It is unethical since a social media platform is vast platform consisting people across the world. Facebook has been developed within Silicon Valley, and majorly involves western values however, the platform is used across the world. Culture diversity is inevitable however it is not easily taken care of easily. People are highly sensitive to their cultural values and it is important to consider cultural aspects. Constraining social media in regions that are culturally different will be part of restriction of freedom of speech. It is necessary to understand the extent of the consequences and filter the content accordingly. Therefore, it is important to control and monitor the contents of social media and not deprive the people from the entire story. People will be deprived of their basic human rights when they are not given access to information they seek. There is certainly a possibility of information being misused (Mozur, 2018). People tend to lose their peace of mind when anything comes near to violation of their culture. Some social media apps in china have already taken initiatives that involves controlling the social media. Some popular social media sites such as twitter, Google, Whatsapp and Facebook messenger and YouTube are not entertained in china, they are replaced with websites that can be controlled by the government. The government strongly monitors the virtual world of social media and it takes immediate actions when there is any content that defy or criticize the communist party. With large population, the impact of any misinformation can be very impactful leading to serious social violence. People in minorities may get effected drastically. People get the opportunity of raising their voice in social media therefore losing the control of the social media will raise concerns associated with cultural aspects (Bbc.co.uk, 2017).
Ethical Aspects of Censorship on Social Media
The situation can be called unethical as the last outcome is not pleasant or commonly good for the large number of people. Looking at the outcomes of free speech on social media, it can be said it is ethical that social media uses data of people using the platform. Social media lets the users use the platform free of cost which makes it even easier for them to type unfiltered hate speech. Therefore, before a person makes use of the social platform, social media requires data that help them to a certain extent. Although it is against the ethics of confidentiality, on the social platform, it is essential to understand the outcomes of privacy. One of the latest frontiers of for lawyers are the social networks and media along with politicians, entrepreneur, and academics. Social media was initially only a way for social networking, which now has turned into a place that can make possible critical issues. The platform has rapidly raised the way people can now communicate and connect with people across the world. Therefore, exchanging thoughts have become more straightforward and easier. It has also become easy to connect with people from different cultural backgrounds. Despite the positive aspects, there are negative aspects as well. It has become easier to target a group and insult, create false conception about groups or minorities.
Following the utilitarian theory of ethics, when the action is done in order to prevent the wrong action from occurring it is an ethical act (Mill, 2016). Therefore, signing on specific requirements help in preventing bigger problems. Disclosure of certain data is necessary that would help social media taking control of its platform. Although there is a big part that needs to be played by the social media that is to ensure the information provided by the users are safe. Keeping the information safe within the soil platform will help in a similar aspect as well.
It is ethical since the fact cannot be denied that it is a dangerous aspect of social media and needs acute prevention. Through social media, every person gets the voice to raise that is possibly not the same in real life. Through social media, social issues become prominent and the magnitude of the issue is identified to be widely vast. The censor has been playing role in filtering information that reaches the audience. However, censure is also considered as the suppression of speech and public communication. The problem that arises when the government is approached in order to control social media, a question of ethics is considered. It would be unethical for the censor to take control. Any material that is deemed to be harmful or prone to cause social disorder is filtered out by the censor. A private institution or the government can regulate censorship. Censor can play a vital part in preventing the fake news; however it is essential to know a limitation. When Censors play the role of limiting content from reaching audiences, it can be considered a violation of basic human rights, the right to information. People are deprived of their right to information, and therefore it is unethical when the censor takes control of the materials that are published online. According to utilitarianism, the action will be considered to be the right action when it benefits the more significant number of people. Therefore, from the perspective of utilitarianism ethics, the action of censor can be called the right action.
The Positive and Negative Aspects of Social Media
The problem needs serious actions to be controlled. There is a need of strong criteria that would help identifying potential threats. The criteria that are needed to be checked in posts are critical to understand as information are perceived in different way in different areas. The impact of information can be time oriented, culture oriented and space oriented. However, there are some aspects that can be called judging criteria of social posts (Dwoskin, 2019). Some speeches are the categorized as the hate speech. It is hard to identify the hate speech through artificial intelligence and it struggles to identify appropriate hate speech. There is no denial that it is one of the hardest problem faced by the social media. For social media, it is hard to identify social posts that reflects hate speech. While some come as jokes, some come in with the social media term ‘memes’. Trolls make the full effort in evading personal space and poison classifiers. Artificial intelligence can only identify key words that are considered breaking the rules however technical expert certainly knows the ways they can fool artificial intelligence. Several sites are undertaking critical initiatives that would recognize various ways of identifying posts that are harmful for the society. YouTube has made its algorithm accordingly that would help detecting videos that are misinformation. As there is no such part that technically violates the rules of the website, the video cannot be removed from the website (Matsakis, 2018). However on identifying such videos, the website would not let it appear on its recommendation. Through this process, YouTube is working on balancing its free speech and still preventing spread of potentially harmful contents. There is need of more research on this aspect in order to prevent such issues.
Conclusion:
An unethical decision would require in-depth realization of the entire situation. People in various groups may face difficult situations due to introduction to the social media to culturally different regions. People in minority groups, belonging to the communities that are not socially acceptable everywhere may face life threating challenges. Therefore, there is a need of accountability for the social media materials. When comes to taking the accountability, the social media itself should bear the responsibility of these specific issues. The social media needs to understand the difference between monitoring social media by government and monitoring social media by social media itself. Ethical decision would be considering the impacts and the causes of that situation. The control of media should be performed by the social media platform itself. An appropriate approach needs to be taken by the social media as it controlling by the government is a loss of democracy.
Bbc.co.uk. (2017, September 26). Social media and censorship in China: how is it different to the West?. Retrieved February 15, 2019, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/41398423/social-media-and-censorship-in-china-how-is-it-different-to-the-west
Grigonis, H. (2018, February 17). Should Governments Moderate Social Media — or the Networks? Retrieved February 15, 2019, from https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/social-network-should-governments-moderate/
Dwoskin, E. (2019, January 26). YouTube is changing its algorithms to stop recommending conspiracies. Retrieved February 15, 2019, from https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-youtube-algorithms-conspiracies-20190125-story.html
Matsakis, L. (2018, September 27). To Break a Hate-Speech Algorithm, Try ‘Love’. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/break-hatespeech-algorithm-try-love/
Mill, J. S. (2016). Utilitarianism. In Seven masterpieces of philosophy (pp. 337-383). Routledge.
Mozur, P. (2018, October 15). A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar?s Military. The New York Times. Retrieved February 15, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html
Prajuli, W. A. (2018, September 18). On social media, ISIS uses fantastical propaganda to recruit members. Retrieved February 15, 2019, from https://theconversation.com/on-social-media-isis-uses-fantastical-propaganda-to-recruit-members86626?fbclid=IwAR3bWCm_6QsSHG1iySUclRQDehq8KASdxEWe_L1xO0VStuXxah7tl3_lc7g
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