Weekly Post Eleven

With this week's seemingly never-ending election, social media has blurred into all the chaos and I have been trying to distance myself from it. Social media can take a toll on one's mental health causing unnecessary stress.

From the small amount of time I have spent on social media recently, I have noticed a large number of false information spreading. On Twitter, I saw that a large majority of Donald Trump’s tweets have been flagged or taken down for spreading false information. In the past, I have seen Twitter do a great job monitoring tweets in order to keep viewers informed on what is false or misleading. With the process of electing a president, false information is especially dangerous.

One social media platform that has not done a good job monitoring information is Facebook. Though we know this is nothing new. Facebook seems to have a long history of allowing content that is false. I understand that because Facebook has such a large user volume that it is incredibly difficult to monitor every post that is shared. Though I believe that with the current political climate, Facebook must be putting in more of an effort to stop these false claims from being rapidly spread.

Unfortunately, many of my family members are the type that believes everything they read on Facebook, and I know I am not the only one to witness this. The power held by social media needs to be contained in the way they censor information. With last week's prompt in mind, I believe that social media is not censoring the correct content. Before we worry about censoring bodies we should be worried about the spread of false information.