Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
That depends on who’s doing the moderation. If it’s a government entity, that’s censorship, and the only time I’m willing to accept it is if it’s somehow actively harmful (i.e. terrorist plots and whatnot). If it’s merely disgusting, that’s for private entities to work out, and private entities absolutely have the right to moderate content they host however they choose.
Why is a private entity significantly different from a government entity? If a coalition of private entities (say, facebook, twitter, youtube, … ) controls most of the commons, they have the power to dictate everything beyond the fringes. We can already see this kind of collusion in mass media to the extent that it’s labeled a propaganda model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
I just don’t think the private/gov dichotomy is enough to decide when censorship and moderation is valid.
The government is supposed to be representing voters’ best interests and have a monopoly on force to enforce rules. We can’t trust anyone to decide for us what speech we can listen to. A government should have no say on restricting speech (sadly, even if that speech does cause harm to people in our LGBT family).
A business should not have power comparable to a government. You probably have to interact with the government to some degree, you shouldn’t have to interact with a specific business at all.
Oh, like the dissemination of propaganda originating from the troll farms of hostile powers? Good idea.
Harmful meaning things like harassment (defined as continued and targeted use of speech intended to harass an individual) or credible threats of violence (i.e. a threat to kill a specific individual, attack an area, etc).
Harmful doesn’t mean “ideas I don’t like.”