Foundational documents of liberal democracy, from the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, establish strong protections for free speech. Even so, the rise of digital platforms—and social media in particular—has added new wrinkles to our thinking on what types of expression should be able to circulate widely with ease. Urged on by well-substantiated claims of real-world harms arising from disinformation, harassment, and other forms of problematic content, policymakers and members of the public have placed pressure on online platforms to limit the availability of certain speech. It would be legally impossible for U.S. regulators to take such action themselves for much of that speech. Platforms, however, have much more power to shape the communities they cultivate and the information they promote. For instance, the United States government generally can’t silence those who spread general COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, even as the Biden administration claims it is killing people. Twitter, Facebook, and Google, however, can—and do—unilaterally move to contain or eliminate such speech and impose consequences on those responsible for it.
This is real power. Accordingly, as...
Read Full Story: https://slate.com/technology/2021/08/social-media-content-moderation-giftschrank.html
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