Should the government have more control over what gets posted and what people say on social media?

Would you be comfortable with the government monitoring and interfering with your online activity and speech? These past couple of years, especially due to the presidency of Donald Trump, the country has been divided on the subject of the interference of the government in what is posted in social media. When asked “Should the government have more control over what gets posted and what people say on social media”, out of 25 people, 18 people said they shouldn’t, which is 72% of the group. Although the government regulating and removing harmful content themselves sounds like a good idea, nevertheless, the government should not be regulating and censoring content on the internet because it skews the line of public and private content.

To understand more about government moderation of social media. Let’s look at what impact it would have if it were to occur. One of these would include the obvious, reducing the amount of unwanted content, when regarding the internet, it “contains tons of material that can be considered harmful. This includes violent and pornographic material, material that incites hatred of various groups, and confidential or classified documents” (Torks) As Explained by Torks, the internet is full of many kinds of content that can prove to be harmful to many people, especially those who are younger on the internet. The government removing and controlling the internet would help get rid of such content and create a safer environment. However, it would not be a good idea to give the government such control over all the web as “introducing censorship, the government exercises full control over the media of a particular state. So, the state has the right to dictate which news can be broadcast and which can not.”(Torks) Torks suggests that by allowing the government to have such control over something as wide as social media, or even the web, they would be able to control things to their will and push things to suit what they want the public to see or hear. Causing many to be in the dark and could cause more lies to spread.

The government and social media are two very different things. How do we know what falls under a simple community service violation to a crime punishable by one’s own justice system on social media? This seems to be a problem especially with the recent fear of foreign countries such as Russia using the media to influence the election and sometimes spread propaganda. Well, there is the subject of how much you can say on social media in which “The protections afforded to social media companies under the [Communications Decency Act] overlap with, but are also more expansive than, the free speech protections in the First Amendment. While social media companies are free to enforce terms of use that ban foreign propaganda, they are not obligated to do so.” (Allen and Rodriguez) As explained by Allen and Rodriguez, social media company’s rules under what speech is allowed are different from the ones created by the government. If propaganda really was spreading around social media, the companies could allow it to stay, but are also allowed to remove it if they should choose. However, the government would view this as something that they are obligated to take care of due to their rules of what is and isn’t allowed under free speech. The government being involved would make this difference apparent. Including the fact that the government can’t do much if the social media company is a private company. However, when it comes to dealing with other countries “Companies are already taking the lead on preventing abuse of their platforms. The government must now do more to identify foreign manipulation, pass that information on to private companies for action, and in some cases order, rather than invite, the removal of foreign content.” (Allen and Rodriguez) Based on the idea of Allen and Rodriguez, while the government has a lot of power, they could only investigate and inform the private company and hope action is taken because when it happens in a private company, it starts to become under the jurisdiction of said company.

As slightly mentioned before, the government and social media are two very things and their rules clash. The government having control of social media would not work with its own laws. When talking about the discussion of economic transactions on social media, Samples believes, “If government blocked (prohibited) that exchange, speech by individuals would be restricted. The prohibition of the economic transaction would be tantamount to prohibiting speech.” (Samples) Here, Samples explains that although there is potentially harmful activity happening, the interruption of this is unconstitutional. What is viewed as harmful on social media can be protected under the law of the government. Like certain kinds of speech This prevents said government from being able to intervene. This dilemma is similar to other instances like owning private property and that “the government has also generally refrained from forcing owners of private property to abide by the First Amendment. Hence individuals have no expectation that the government will force the owners of social media to refrain from suppressing speech on their platforms (provided the owners do not violate civil rights laws)” (Samples) Samples points out that there are other instances that their enforcement of the First Amendment cannot apply unless there are special events. So even when the government wants to protect free speech, they cannot do so. Either way, the government still has its limits and them being in charge of regulating social media would make that apparent.

Overall from what we can see, there are many things that come from the government regulating social media. Although there are good reasons, like preventing more harmful content from appearing and spreading, it ultimately will not work. Simply because of different worlds of the government and the online and the limitations of the First Amendment. Which can cause many problems both in and outside of the internet. However, this doesn’t mean that social media will be completely unsupervised. Bigger social media platforms are making new ways to find harmful or foreign content and removing them, not to mention how one can simply report certain things themselves so the content could be reviewed and possibly removed. Hopefully these platforms will be able to do more to prevent more words of violence from spreading.

Bibliography

-Torks. "Biggest Pros And Cons Of Social Media Censorship", Utopia, 2020,https://utopia.fans/censorship/biggest-pros-and-cons-of-social-media-censorship/ .Mar 10, 2022.

-Allen. Rodriguez. "To Protect Democracy, Protect the Internet.", Foreign Policy, July 14, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/14/united-states-election-interference-illegal-social-media/ . Mar 9, 2022.

-Samples. "Why the Government Should Not Regulate Content Moderation of Social Media." Cato Institute, April 9, 2019, https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/why-government-should-not-regulate-content-moderation-social-media . Mar 10, 2022.