What are the limits of Twitter and Facebook?

Posted on 8th Feb 2021 by rohit kumar

An important meeting was going on at Trump Tower in New York.

In addition to Apple's Tim Cook and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, top executives of Amazon and Google were also present. The host of this meeting was the newly elected President of America, Donald Trump. The issue discussed in the meeting was how do these companies work together with Trump?

 

Like a good host, Trump said, "This is a great group of people. You can work well, I want to help."

Trump has left the White House after his term ends. Meanwhile, Twitter banned him. Social media networks like YouTube owned by Facebook and Google suspended his account.

 

Companies are doing arbitrary?

Meanwhile, Twitter has banned about 70 thousand accounts. Serious questions arose regarding this. Raising the question of freedom of speech, many people asked who should have the right to ban social media views?

 

Rachel Alexander, who writes on political subjects, says, "Actually, this is an attempt to sideline the right-wing people."

 

Rachel is a lawyer and writes for many websites. She claims that for some time, the voice of those who hold conservative views like her on social media is being silenced.

 

Rachel Alexander says, "A lot of accounts have been closed. My friends I know personally have been removed from Facebook. I hear about hundreds of people, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Removed from YouTube. "

 

Anticipation of ban

 

Rachel feels that she may be banned soon. They are also getting warnings.

 

She says she posted a meme, claiming that if Justice Ginsburg had retired at the age of 80, then US President Barack Obama would have replaced him with a liberal judge.

 

After this, he got a message from Instagram that the fact-checking of your post has been done. Now, this post is gray. You have to click to see it. The meme that Rachel is talking about went viral.

 

After the death of Justice Ruth Ginsberg, when the Trump administration started the process of filling the vacant space, this meme was exposed. Rachel believes that the decision to ban people is made based on ideology.

 

'Leftist dominance'

She says, "There is a group of people who have control over social media companies. Their thinking is leftist. They have decided that they will win the debate in the same way. People like us, whose ideas do not match them, By removing them from the social media platform, they will silence their voice. I believe that this is being done based on political thinking because I never heard that leftist thinkers have been removed. "

 

Twitter boss Jack Dorsi says that the decision to delete Donald Trump's account after the attack on the Capitol Building was made based on the information available at the time.

 

But should it be seen as a restriction on the freedom to speak? On this question, Rachel says, "The first amendment in America was about freedom of expression. We considered it so important."

 

She says that when Trump asked his supporters to carry out a peaceful march, he would be placed within the scope of freedom to speak, and if you now see him as a criminal act, then you are blaming him for speaking.

 

However, Rachel also says that there should be no room for incitement of violence on social media. She also wants some changes.

 

Rachel says, "I would like the social media companies not to let you go on just because of the meaningless reasons. I also do not want the government to be in control here. It should be that we, the users, on editorial decisions To litigate. "

 

Intent to change

That is, if someone posts something about you online, then you can case them but not on the platform. This was the reason that during the Twitter #MeToo campaign, accusations have been made on famous people through Twitter.

 

Section 230 came into existence in America through two important court cases of the last decade of the last century. Now in the US, both political parties want to change it for different reasons.

 

Says Ashlee Johnson, "The Democratic Party says section 230 protects online services with accountability regarding third-party content. Hate speech, which serves online, includes content related to abusal harassment of children or anything else." Insiders are not motivated to remove harmful content. On the other hand, critics of the Republican Party argue that online platforms censor a lot of statements. "

 

Political debate continues about section 230, but Ashlee says that it was not intended to be.

 

Ashley says, "There has been a misconception that online platforms should be politically neutral under section 230. The intention with section 230 was that the platforms be able to control the content objectively. So you will find that some If the platform is trending towards the Left, then some platforms have a large number of people of conservative thinking. "

 

Helpful statute

Remember, when Twitter was not banned on Donald Trump, then he used to tweet constantly to end section 230.

 

Jeff Cousaf, a professor of cybersecurity law at the United States Naval Academy, says, "There are some people who believe that there should be no investigation or control of the Internet. They think that if you post something on the Internet, So they should go on social media platforms as if they were their own company. But, if this happens, the internet will be meaningless, because then there will be all the harmful and waste-like content. Then it will be difficult to use the internet. "

 

Jeff says that after the end of section 230, people of both parties will be disappointed. They say that if section 230 is abolished, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube will still exist, but they will do the work differently.

 

He says, "I think because of increasing accountability they will have to work harder to remove meaningless content. Then there will be more suspensions and restrictions. In that case, the market of small platforms and social media will become even smaller. . "

 

Problems will increase if changes are made

 

Jeff Koff goes on to say, "I think it will be difficult to build a new platform after finishing Section 230. If you think of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube and then think that it would have been able to stand in a world, Where section 230 would not have been possible, it would not have been possible. These are businesses that run solely on the content that users create. If their accountability is fixed, then how can users create anything? "

 

According to section 230, social media platforms do not have to be politically neutral. The only worry about Jeff Koseff is that it should not happen that Facebook, Twitter, and Google grow up and the rest of them get removed from the market.

 

At the same time, Cori Doctoro, the consultant of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is concerned about a different reason. He says, "The problem is that we have handed over a large part of our culture to the officials of half a dozen tech companies."

 

Donald Trump's social media accounts continued for so long, the reason for this was that Twitter and Facebook believed that his messages meant for the society. Later he felt that this is not the case and action was taken against him. Kori warns about this integration of power.

 

Many questions arose

 

When Twitter banned Trump, people pointed fingers at other leaders of the world. These include the name of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

 

Cory Doctoro says, "I remember the Soviet era when discussing all these things. Then many people took decisions about the lives of all the people, but they had no accountability. What are they doing?" Yes, we did not have any information about this. We only listened to the rumors. I think the lesson we do not get here is that Facebook and Twitter are not suitable to decide on the policy related to speaking, but the problem is That no one deserves it. "

 

The question is also that when America has rules and laws on monopoly, then how did these tech companies become so big?

 

Corey Doctoro says, "Not only the United States and Britain, but governments all over the West are historically against monopoly. In these countries, thinking that if a company has a monopoly, these customers, employees, and supply chains are Is not good for them. It is also not good for governance. They will use the extra profits to influence policies. "