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Monitoring Hate Speech

Have you ever gone on a social media site, like Twitter, to use its platform for evil vs. good? Twitter is one platform that provides the perfect culture to allow hate speech to grow. Until recently, people could write and say basically anything they wanted on Twitter, even if it was meant to seriously threaten or hurt someone else. There are many opinionated, but especially abusive people online today and are using their social media platforms to harass and hurt other individuals. Some could argue what they would consider abusive or harassment. For example, I could be a very sensitive person and take everything someone said to me to heart and genuinely feel attacked but my friend could receive the same type of harassment and not be bothered or think twice about it. The point is, if someone is threatening your life or making you feel uncomfortable to live your life, then they should not be allowed to use these platforms. It is not okay to ever make someone feel like they can't walk down the street or go to church, etc. because they don't feel safe. The 1st Amendment does have laws that don't protect the right to abusive speech, allow they aren't as enforced as they should be this day in age.
 It is up to the platforms we are using to monitor and protect their users from hate speech. Over the last few years, Twitter has changed a lot of their laws to prevent users from abusing their platform and saturating it with negative content. Users who have repeatedly had their account suspended will not be allowed back on, even if they make new accounts in attempt to hide their identity(The Christian Science Monitor). During the presidential election, the company admitted they did little to stop hate speech, as this was a very trying time in America with lots of people tweeting every minute about the politics and personal opinions. It is a very tricky grounds to operate upon, for you can't stop all speech in regards to the 1st amendment. You have to be careful as to what is considered abusive, for someone could consider it so or not. As we get further and further with our technology and progress, these questions will remain as to what is counted under the 1st amendment, as it can be tricky to decipher at times. The world is changing and continue to change, as has the opinions and values of new generations. I personally believe, there are many more people today that do believe hate speech is a serious crime and will never be universally accepted as opposed to our grandparents and their grandparents before them.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2017/0207/Twitter-takes-further-steps-to-crack-down-on-hate-speech
The Christian Science Monitor. Twitter takes further steps to crack down on hate speech. n.d. <https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2017/0207/Twitter-takes-further-steps-to-crack-down-on-hate-speech>.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 10, 2017 at 9:36 PM

    I think it's interesting that you bring up individual sensitivities in regard to this matter. I agree, it does often depend on the receiver of possible demeaning speech if they deem it threatening/hurtful or not. This brings it back to our discussions on what a reasonable person is. Ideally, before anyone puts something in cyberspace they should ask themselves if a reasonable person would find it offensive, but obviously this doesn't happen because as you said it is hard to regulate. I wonder how Twitter is able to track accounts back to the same people when its under a different name. This process seems time consuming so their lack of action appears more justified to me. Because there are millions of users on Twitter it would be impossible to regulate everything, but their new policies show that recent news has forced them to enforce their guidelines more.

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