Social media without content moderation would ruin us and the Supreme Court should know
As I write this, I feel a bit like a broken record, once again reporting what the United States is like The Supreme Court could do that today, with a ruling (Monday or shortly thereafter), decide the fate of social media as we know it. Judges could choose to leave content moderation decisions to these companies, or declare them all icons of free and unfettered expression.
The two cases, one from Florida and one from Texas, both center on claims that Facebook, The claims largely stem from a flashpoint in American history: the January 6 riots and storming of the US Capitol. At the time, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media companies defunded former President Donald Trump out of fear that further posts from him would lead to more violence. During the same era, the companies also sought to stamp out what they saw as dangerous misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccinations. If the two cases are successful, they would revolutionize social media companies’ ability to moderate and ban content.
It’s one of the biggest and most charged U.S. Supreme Court cases of the year, but perhaps the question for the justices comes down to what these platforms really are: publishers or utilities. Only: I don’t think it’s that simple.
Is it possible to be a curator of utilities and contents? Probably not, but even a utility company must ensure that the service it provides and the content of the supply – electricity, gas, water, communications or television signals – are of high quality and safe for human consumption.
Social media platforms, thanks to some of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, Section 230have enjoyed the protection and privileges of utility companies and have not suffered from the obligations of content curators and publishers as for example The New York Times.
Moderation in a changing world
Of course, these rules were created long before the age of social media and decades before we understood how social media consumption affects our surprisingly malleable human minds. Sure, we had AOL and bulletin boards in the 1980s and 1990s, but nothing really prepared us for Twitter (now X), Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms that consume our screens and much of our time. seizing (have you checked your screen time lately?).
Young minds do particularly vulnerable to algorithmically manipulated data fed to us as highly targeted hotbeds of content and ideas. Social media has the power to shape or at least enhance our perception of the world. In a sense, social media has worked in contrast to publications and media, which once sought to enlighten and rationalize the world through the discovery and sharing of facts.
When politicians, corporations, global powers, and others realized that they could not only participate in social media but also help shape the messages conveyed through it, they took advantage of the platforms’ agnostic stance. Twitter and YouTube didn’t care what you posted. Content moderation rules at the time were simple and obvious, usually covering adult content as if that were our biggest problem. No one foresaw the future and certainly no one foresaw January 6.
This won’t end well
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Texas and Florida, social media will change, but not in a good way. You can already see what it could be like on quite a bit of it). directly from Musk himself).
SCOTUS could rob these platforms of their most basic moderation capabilities. It would be like telling the water plant you can’t purify our water without explaining to every customer why you’re removing lead and other contaminants. Social media is in a constant battle with content and information polluters. If it can’t automate some of the moderation, the platforms will be overrun and soon become unusable.
Do I think that these platforms should be able to explain their decisions if asked? Yes, but I guarantee YouTube and others make millions of automated decisions every day. Most of them are not appreciated by us because we cannot miss what we do not see and we have to be grateful for most of the things we do not see.
Over the past few years, I’ve heard from many people on both sides of the political spectrum who believe they have been overshadowed by social media companies. I take this as a sign that there is some balance. Social media is not specifically designed to ban you, but only blocks offensive, questionable, or even blatantly incorrect or dangerous content. They are often wrong, but not as much as they are right.
Censorship is bad when it happens, but social media without content moderation would be downright dangerous. The US Supreme Court needs to know this and understand that there is no such thing as perfect content moderation and that a world without it is likely to be completely awful.