WhatsappCensorship is way out of control in the field of social media. How did this come to happen? Well, first off, social media became a dominant force in the world in meteoric fashion. In just a few years, the most powerful aspect of the power of the internet was harnessed via social media in a way that completely transformed the way hundreds of millions of people’s opinions were influenced. That is simply staggering. Some have claimed that the world has never shifted so massively in such a small space of time as it has with the advent of social media. Enter some on the far-right with non-mainstream opinions that were clearly very bothersome to those with progressive leftist opinions on politics. The issue is that so many of the leaders of the leading social media companies seem to have singular opinions that lead to censorship of the hard right-wing.
A Boomerang Effect
There is at present a swing towards much more censorship of any content that endangers what progressives consider dangerous. It seems to me that this will lead to a boomerang impact. Many who have had the plug pulled on their opinions on leading social media channels will not take it sitting down. They will fight back. That is what this film is about.
Whether one thinks that the far-right commentators are over the deep end or not, one needs to consider strongly the ramifications of heavy censorship. As a general rule, the best recommendation is to fight problematic speech with more speech. But yes, there does need to be oversight and some level of censorship. The problems arise when censorship is handled by a small cadre of people with similar political opinions. The ideal makeup of the censors should be 100% non-governmental, independent, yet respected voices, who command enough respect that all of the major players will want to be recognized by this body of ethicists. They should lean more towards free speech, and not towards censorship. More importantly, there should be a grey area – where this group issues warnings. Meaning, if something is questionable and the committee cannot come to an agreement on censoring or not, there should be a warning for the content such as, “This content could not be ascertained to be true or false.” One day, the world of social media will be more of a level playing field when outside agencies serve as watchdogs – first and foremost – for freedom of speech, and secondly for accuracy.
