Social Media and Censorship

#StopTheSteal. Ever since the events of the January 6 Capitol riot, Facebook took to eliminating content containing the trending phrase. In recent weeks, Big Tech and social media companies have taken huge strides in limiting and even outright banning the spread of information they deem to be misleading or inciting violence. Some of the more dramatic moves included former President Donald Trump’s suspension from platforms like Twitter and Facebook. While some have spurred on these actions, others have condemned them as undemocratic and a violation of free speech. However, at least when interpreting the First Amendment verbatim, it seems that the free speech amendment focuses on the government, and not necessarily on private companies.

“Freedom of speech is where you are protected from the government to say what you want,” U.S. History teacher Patrick Bertram said. “The government can’t come after you for your speech. For example, if you criticize the President or the legislature, you still have freedom of speech and they shouldn’t put you in jail for it. And, the government can’t fire you from a government job for your speech. When the framers wrote up the Constitution and added the First Amendment, they were concerned about the government interfering with people’s speech. They were worried about the government being oppressive.”

The First Amendment is unclear about what can be defined as unprotected speech. Over the course of American history, the definition of unprotected speech has fluctuated often. Today, many believe that “fake news”, misinformation and hate speech should not be condoned. 

“There’s a fine line between what’s an opinion and what’s fake news or hate speech, and over the last two or three years we have gotten better at drawing that line,” social studies teacher Jacob Smasal said. “Hate speech you can kind of define generally as anything that is directly derogatory to another group, whether that’s an ethnicity, a religion, a gender, or anything else. In terms of fake news, to be fake simply means that it’s been proven wrong elsewhere. If you say something that is demonstrably false, that’s what we call fake news.”

There are many who believe that speech on social media should be regulated in order to reduce the spread of such fake news and hate speech.

“People should be able to speak their mind and express their opinions freely, but it’s to an extent,” junior Anders Larson said. “People should be able to say what they want given that it’s not harmful to anyone else. Hate speech is looked down upon and you can get sued for libel and such. So we have some regulations on speech and I think it’s good that we have that. If you go and threaten someone or insult someone, I think there’s a certain limit to what’s acceptable. Fake news, on the other hand, I think is harder to regulate. If something is blatantly incorrect then it’s easy to identify, but I think there hasn’t been much effort to try and stop it, unless it’s harmful to someone else. ” 

To combat what they perceive as misinformation, social media companies have started to flag certain posts as “misleading” or “disputed,” especially on Twitter.

“I definitely think things on social media should be flagged as misleading when it’s needed,” Larson said. “The issue we have on social media is that anyone can post whatever they want. You get a host of misinformation. QAnon really started on social media and there’s a whole lot of people who believe ridiculous conspiracy theories. So I think it’s important for social media apps to flag stuff as incorrect and provide explanations.”

In more extreme measures, some social media companies have elected to hide certain information and even ban users from their platforms. However, this is leading to questions into how much power private companies should have.

“Companies like Twitter are private so they are free to do whatever they want on their platforms,” Larson said. “I think that as of now it was a good thing that Twitter banned Trump because he incited violence. But I think we need to figure out to what extent these companies are allowed to ban people. These apps are how people talk to each other, especially now when we’re all held up in our houses. It’s a question of what the private company is allowed to control, that is if it is allowed to regulate.” 

Big Tech companies have recently faced much criticism for their actions, and a common claim is that a double standard is being applied. Many Republicans and conservatives have had their speech regulated for making claims of election fraud, and they wonder where this scrutiny was in 2016 after some claimed that Trump had colluded with Russia. Some also point out the regulation of the article about the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, despite there being an eventual investigation into the matter. Big Tech’s critics argue that by restricting speech on social media, a vital platform for discussing information is tarnished. 

“I remember seeing a few things about some posts on Facebook and other sites being labelled as misleading or incorrect while some other ones that were incorrect weren’t,” senior Ty Rasmussen said. “I’m not sure how they decide whether or not to label something but it seems that it could be one-sided. And I don’t think they needed to ban Trump on social media platforms. People say that he incited the Capitol riot, but by banning him it takes away the speech of a huge public figure and that doesn’t help.”

Others believe that public figures like former President Trump should have their speech monitored due to the far reach of their influence.

“Protected free speech is meant to be speech which isn’t hateful and doesn’t promote hate crimes, and I think it should be truthful,” senior Olivia Stellpflug said. “I don’t think that those with large audiences and lots of power should be unlimited in what they say because they kind of have a responsibility to the public.” 

On the other hand, many have been advocating for more government control over social media companies, asserting that Big Tech has too much power.  

“I don’t think it’s fair that private companies have so much power over what’s going on in their platforms,” Rasmussen said. “The major companies can control what information gets out there and what doesn’t. The government should have a say in how companies regulate things, because these social media companies can be very biased.”

Republican legislators have suggested that laws regarding social media be reexamined. 

“Conservatives complaining that they are being silenced on social media will often bring up that maybe we need to reevaluate how expression and speech are being regulated on social media,” AP Government and Politics teacher Paul Stellpflug said. “In particular, they’ll talk about Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. It says that social media companies and internet service providers cannot be held accountable for the expression and speech on their platforms that might result in harm, death, and destruction of property. People can go after the instigators of violence but not the platform on which that speech was made.”

 Many Republicans have claimed that Section 230 has encouraged Big Tech to arbitrarily censor conservatives in order to stay in liberals’ favor and avoid Section 230 from being repealed. It could be a case of “following the money.”

“These social media platforms are private companies - and the keyword there is ‘company,’” Smasal said. “If they are a private company, then they have one goal, which is to make money. So, obviously, they’re going to do, in most cases, whatever they think is going to make them the most money. If a social media platform thinks they’re going to make more money by allowing more controversial and decisive speech, I think they’re going to do it. But that’s not the case. ” 

After the Capitol riot, there was more cause for social media companies to regulate content.

“There’s a reason why we’ve basically reached a tipping point after what happened at the Capitol building, where finally some of the worst offenders on some of these platforms were finally suspended from them,” Smasal said. “Because at that point, in the math of the private companies, they were more harmful than they were good. So I think the private companies are out for themselves. They don’t work for us, they don’t work for anybody, they only work for themselves.”

Disenchanted by Big Tech’s actions, some Republicans hope to revise or repeal Section 230 to prevent biased regulation on social media. However, at least on the surface, it could be argued that these contentions seem contradictory to what Republicans normally value.

“There have been Republicans who have been saying that maybe we need to reevaluate Section 230 and take away the protections from social media companies,” Paul Stellpflug said. “And that’s interesting because if social media companies could be held accountable for the speech that leads to harm of life or property, I would imagine that social media companies would regulate even more speech and expression. So that’s an intriguing angle for government intervention. I’m a bit confused, frankly, because it’s usually conservatives that talk about less government and more free market solutions. And here they are talking about using the power of the federal government to get tough with social media platforms. It’s definitely true that conservatives have lost the game on social media. Social media is dominated by liberal voices. Social media is owned by liberal voices.”

As social media companies are private entities, it may prove difficult to regulate them, at least in the foreseeable future.

“The ‘censorship’ is not coming from the government,” Bertram said. “With social media, they are policing themselves. They are saying you can’t like this on our platform. It’s a private industry. It’s like if I walked into a restaurant and I just decided to start swearing at the top of my lungs - the manager has every right to say ‘you need to leave.’ Twitter, Facebook, and those types of platforms are essentially private businesses, like that restaurant. They are open to people, but you have to follow their rules. If you don’t follow their rules, then they have the right to kick you out.” 

However, historical examples have shown that even the most powerful private entities can eventually be held accountable by government standards.

“Our economy is so widely regulated, but largely social media is in this weird transition,” Paul Stellpflug said. “I can’t help but think about what’s about to happen, or even what’s already happening, in the social media world. It could be the same as what happened to industry during the Progressive Era in American history. During the Industrial Revolution, industry was largely unregulated. A man gets their arm cut off by a machine? You’re fired. There was no insurance. There was no penalty to the company. Children could be enslaved, tied and chained to machines. And there was no federal legislation on child labor, or for that matter, on minimum wage. But during the progressive era, a new brand of politicians decided that they were going to pass legislation regulating industry. I think that’s what social media could be looking at as well, and I think there’s sort of a fun parallel in history there.” 

Throughout U.S. history, there are a multitude of instances regarding free speech that have met scrutiny at the federal level.

“There are books of Supreme Court cases on free speech,” Paul Stellpflug said. “There’s Schenck vs. United States which establishes that speech that presents a ‘clear and present danger,’ to the community good is not tolerated. It was during that ruling that one of the Supreme Court justices said that you don’t have the right to go into a crowded theater yelling ‘fire! fire! fire!’” 

Other Supreme Court decisions in the past took a less hardline approach towards restricting speech. 

“Another really critical case that’s going to come up, I would imagine, is Brandenburg vs. Ohio,” Paul Stellpflug said. “It had to do with a Klu Klux Klan member who was giving a speech with the rhetoric of white supremacy, but was stopped under an Ohio law talking about speech which disturbs the public good. It went to the Supreme Court and it actually decided that the man’s speech was unconstitutionally limited. If you speak about the inferiority of a particular group, you have that right, that’s fine. However, the moment you start speaking in a way, and I quote, which results in ‘imminent, lawless action,’ then you’re done and your speech is no longer protected.”

The situation seen today with social media and free speech, however, has no concrete historical decision to build off of, again, because of the distinction between the government and a private company. If anything, the current dilemma proves the volatility of the current political climate. 

“The precedent that current events could set up is sort of unclear and fuzzy,” Paul Stellpflug said. “For example, I think Brandenburg vs. Ohio applies directly to Trump’s speech immediately before the protest at and storming of the Capitol. He never said ‘let’s go hurt somebody.’ So did his speech really provoke ‘imminent, lawless action?’ Anyways, if anything, it’s entertaining. American politics - the greatest reality television show. But these ‘actors’ - the politicians - are actually working in reality.”

By Akashraj Karthikeyan

Oshkosh West Index Volume 117 Issue V

February 26th, 2021