This Article Will be Removed because it
Goes against Facebook’s Community Standards!
Freedom of speech is defined as a cultural and political system that integrated together. It’s the interaction of a group of people together in which they would agree, disagree, criticize or gossip. Through the system of networking people exercise their freedom. They take a practical part in their society through contributing in making ideas and developing new meanings of concepts. Freedom of speech allows ordinary people to participate freely in the spread of ideas and in the creation of meanings that, in turn, help constitute them as persons. (Balkin, 2004, p. 4)
Freedom of speech plays a big role in a society’s development and leads it towards democracy. Freedom of speech is an essential of modern democracy since democracy itself depends on the contribution of people in decision making. “A democratic culture is a culture in which individuals have a fair opportunity to participate in the forms of meaning making that constitute them as individuals.2 Democratic culture is about individual liberty as well as collective self-governance; it is about each individual’s ability to participate in the production and distribution of culture.” (Balkin, 2004, p. 4) Societies are changing and in parallel people along with their thoughts are changing as well. People are seeking more Freedom and liberty, but is social media platforms changing on the same track? Through these platform’s new policies and conditions, social media is negatively facing freedom in which sometimes these policies are not understandable.
Today, new forms of freedom of speech are introduced with four main changes which are mainly the interactivity, mass participation, non-exclusive appropriation and creative transformation. Apparently, those changes are double edged. Although they represent a new approach towards democracy and freedom of speech but on the other hand demanding. Although the flow of information and different ideas becomes simpler in this way but it’s obvious there’s a huge control over social media and the democratic concept is shading out.
Under different names such as “hate speech, obscenity, harassment…” and others, backed-up with the Famous title “Policies” social media platforms are controlling people’s ideas after claiming they’re the tool from where they reach their freedom! Facing huge corporations and pre-backed content people’s thoughts are managed and fixed in the way that best fit people in control. Yes, this modern change of media gives one a better access to information but in contrast limits the spread of one’s ideas.
With an access to fast and equal spread of information conventional media made a huge change and helps in the advancement and development of free speech in societies, a better step to enhance democracy. Conventional media is presented by the traditional media such as magazines, television, radio…” Conventional media is known as the most trustworthy compared to social media were anyone mostly is allowed to broadcast fake news through a blog. Traditional media was the first to shed the light on people’s obstacles and misery. It gave people a space then to represent what mattered to them and their needs. “Traditional media is looked at as the most trustworthy and most reliable form of media and news throughout the world. The subject of trust is a tremendous advantage for traditional media. When information is taken, or heard, from a source such as a newspaper, magazine, or a radio station, it is automatically considered credible.” (makaylaheisler, 2013) This credibility of traditional media is gained through the regulations that are found over it. Regulations mainly forbid the existence of fake news or news that are not backed up with evidence which gives advantage to controversial media and keeps it the trusted space that people refer to. “Morgan reveals that when asked what sort if news people trust the most, free to air TV won at 38 per cent (I suspect the ABC would be a big part of the figures and they don’t take advertising) but newspaper including their web sites stands at 25 per cent. The community now understand about fake news so newspapers have an excellent platform.”(Gottleibsen, 2017) On the other hand what weakens traditional media is it working for the advantage of a party and it being a one-way communication that people can’t be a (live) part of it.
The spread of information became faster and easier in the digital age in which publishing is the choice and the right of any individual. Otherwise, this isn’t going right in which people themselves are enhancing the spread of fake and less important news and on the other hand social media platforms are randomly spreading community policies and conditions which negatively faces the fact of free speech.
Nowadays, people consumes their news from social media platforms such as Facebook. Most of these news are fake, and they’re rapidly consumed by people. “Partisans share totally fake stories from fringe websites. That has worsened the nation’s political polarization and lowered the quality of democratic discourse.” (Lee, 2016) Lately during the elections in America Facebook was claimed for its role in changing the elections votes through fake news! Zuckerberg Facebook’s CEO was asked then about Facebook’s responsibility on the election results at a California technology conference. He claimed that: “There is a certain profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason someone could have voted the way they did is they saw some fake new… why you would think there would be fake news on one side and not the other?” Of course none is sure if Facebook was a part of it or not.
What matters is that community policies done by Facebook doesn’t take action over such aspects. They prefer removing a picture of a mother breastfeeding because it (violates their community standards) rather than giving attention to the fact that Facebook becoming the home of fake news!
What bothers them in their policies are editorial decisions! They mainly care about the posts that should be chosen as the most important news to be placed at the top. These are chosen according to the most sensational not the latest or important ones, in a way to grab users. Facebook makes billions of editorial decisions every day. And often they are bad editorial decisions — steering people to sensational, one-sided, or just plain inaccurate stories. (Lee, 2016)
Then, this is not the job of platforms or governments to take the decisions and policies because they’ll be either bias or irrelevant. It is the responsibility of the users themselves to stop the spread of false information although this also should be performed neutrally without being bias for a better and advanced experience of free speech on platforms.
All in all, digital media should have responsibility over its roles and effects on the society starting and ending with the point of the freedom of speech. Digital media algorithms must belong to the public in which they should be highly aware of the lies and the facts and what deserves to get attention for its important and true content. The control of governments and media platforms turned out to be a huge gap and a threat to democracy. Some rules and regulations won’t be bad for users to take a safe first step, but censorships and regulations would never be the answer!
Bibliography
Balkin, J. M. (2004). Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society. Yale Law School, 1–56. Retrieved from: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1239&context=fss_papers
Gottleibsen, R. (2017). Giving traditional media new hope. The Australian . Retrieved from: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/robert-gottliebsen/giving-traditional-media-new-hope/news-story/4782288ee0d77087a6e791ba87ad56de
Lee, T. B. (2016). Mark Zuckerberg is in denial about how Facebook is harming our politics. Vox. Retrieved from: https://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/6/13509854/facebook-politics-news-bad
makaylaheisler. (2013). What advantages does traditional media have over emerging media and vice versa? What are the shortcomings of each type of media? Wordpress, 1. Retrieved from:
