The Status of Social Media in the US

 

The Status of Social Media in the US

Recently within the United States, many of the major heads of some of the most prominent social media platforms, from Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey, to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg were called to face the United States Congress recently with some of the main issues being cited being the censorship of certain content on social media. The argument made against the selective deletion of content by Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz was plain and clear saying “Who the hell elected you?” when addressing Jack Dorsey directly. He continued to say, “Why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic super PAC,” “silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?”. This brings up a very interesting point with our society. Does a privatized online company that owns a platform that connects people have the right to privately moderate their platform? And further, does the act of privately moderating this platform violate our freedom?

            To cover the first pressing matter here, personally I do believe that all of these platforms have the right to allow or not allow content based on their own arbitrary rules that may or may not be justifiable. Fundamentally, this is very much a function of what a private company should be allowed to do, allow, or not allow information to represent their brand based on their own company set of morals. However there is a problem with this, the way that social media functions in the modern day, it is more and more common that we see the argument that social media is equally a news platform and thus should be held to the same standards that the press are held to. I simply disagree with this argument, I think while a symptom of the creation of a freely operating social space is to invite the discourse of current events that comes with it, this does not change the core reality of what this environment is. It is an inequitably moderated medium just as many would make the argument many other prominent institutions are.

            Addressing the second main point, no, I do not see the deletion of what is deemed potentially harmful information, or in many cases outright misinformation. But to truly address the case of freedom, these social realms I do not believe should feel the need to operate by the free society standards we set here in the US, especially if we are going to take into account the global impact these platforms actually have. The reality of the situation is that these social platforms operate in what we would consider very much a grey area of the access to full freedom. Being both a gathering location for people all over the world gives the perception that an and everything may go, but in reality, as with many other companies these tech giants are choosing to act as exactly what they are, private entities. On one side, Republicans seem to see this as a violation of freedom. While on the other side, Democrats are seemingly seeing this as another try at garnering favorable treatment for their candidate going into the election. Overall, I believe this event may be being charged more by high emotions politically rather than a true violation or infringement of free society.