Free Speech On Social Media
“The point of freedom of speech is not that everyone shall speak, but that everything worth saying shall be said” Meiklejohn states (As cited in Balkin, 2004).
“Democracy is the everyone — not just political, economic or cultural elites has a fair chance to participate in the production of culture and development of meanings.” (Balkin, 2004). A democratic culture is a culture in which individuals have a fair opportunity to participate in forms of meaning making that constitute them as individuals. (Kapidzic & Martins, 2015). Democracy is about “individual liberty” and “collective self-governance”. It’s about every person’s ability to join in the process of distributing and producing cultures. Through free speech, one can raise his/her voice so it could be heard. If people’s voice is neglected then a democracy does not exist, for how is it “the rule of people”? People in a democracy rule through their thoughts, criticizing’s, comments and compliments. Participation in culture is valuable, it gives human the ability to have a significant role in society.
Freedom of speech according to Boss (2013) is a regulated right to express one’s opinion without governmental or other interferences. However, it is not an absolute right for its limited by the rights of others so equal interests and needs are pursued.
Free speech is a fundamental right for humans and a universal principle. Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights state:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Freedom of speech gives ordinary people the ability to participate freely in the spread of their ideas and in creating meaning that help establish their personality.
As a fourth state, the role of traditional media is to be the link between society and state. It was the duty of the media to gather public’s opinions and share it with the world. The main purpose of media is to provide the information necessary for a free and self governing liberal society (Ward, 2011, p.67).
But how often was the happening? How much were traditional media capable of gathering the public’s thoughts? The public used those mass media outlets as a source of information these platforms offered a one-way communication with the audience.
SPEAKERS < LISTENRS
Unlike mass mediated platforms, the internet offers a form of a participation culture. Internet users through social networks were able to create and broadcast information without the interference of traditional media outlets. Also users are able to create both a textual and visual presentation of themselves in the form of an individual profile (Kapidzic & Martins, 2015).
According to Balkin (2004), digital technologies offer individuals the liberty to participate in culture through the usage of existing cultural materials that are tools accessible to most. As Balkin proposes, digital technology suggests an image of what a democratic culture could be.
The free speech law existed before digital technologies did. The law was written by the state (representatives of people choice). But, according to media laws of free speech. Who decides what is ethical and what is not?
Machine Vs. Humans
Thanks to technology, machine like algorithms decide should be removed or kept on social media sites. But do algorithms read the regulations as users do?
In some suspension incidents, social media sites suspend users without further explanation then the official suspension statement as “Your account has been disabled for violating our terms. Learn how you may be able to restore your account.”. In most cases, the term “violating” is not backed with any clarification.
Case of Dani Diamond:
“Instagram Deleted My Account with 135K Followers. Zero Warning.”
Dani Diamond is a fashion and portrait photographer. After 5 years of creating his Instagram account and working hard on gaining followers (135K) it was closed.
Dani stated “I never received any emails with any explanations or any note stating why the account was disabled or what terms I violated.”
He also said “I only take photos of models who are dressed modestly, my likes were authentic and built up over five years, and I never used any third-party apps.”
Dani claims that if this is the case, then “this opens the door for photographer’s (or any other business’s) competitors to just report another business and have them removed. All of a sudden the reporting tool becomes a marketing tool. How great would it be if you report your competitor’s page enough times to have it shut down?”
One of the comments on his Facebook post mentioned “the moment when you realize your account got taken down but the one of Dan Bilzerian is perfectly alright…”
Dan Bilzerian is an Instagram user with 23.1 million followers. His photos are mostly about girls that are almost naked, guns and games.
Instagram Community Guidelines
If Instagram was acting according to it’s guidelines, then how is Dan Bilzerian account still active?
What’s to keep an account from being shut down? If Instagram is simply using algorithms that use the amount of times people report accounts for no reason, how does that make sense? An account with 135,000 followers shouldn’t be easily shut unless it’s reported thousands of times. Shouldn’t there be some sort of review process involving real humans to make sure the reports have a basis?
Instagram uses algorithms that use the amount of times people report accounts. Such decisions include humans not machines. Some claim that machine are objective while humans are subjective. Exactly! Humans are by nature subjective thus a machine can’t handle thier subjective issues.
A question to ask: if an account gets suspended for supposed legitimate reasons, isn’t it the right of the user to discuss his/her issue with a real human not machine?
If an account does get shut down for seemingly legitimate reasons, shouldn’t there be a real appeal process where the account owner can interact with humans?
The purpose of free speech is to achieve humanity and allow people to express themselves. Respecting the other is necessary when practicing free speech in real life or social media, but how can a machine decide what is respectful or not? In order to strengthen freedom of speech on social media, human decisions aside algorithm must be involved. Users have the ultimate right to receive clarification on what’s going on.
Sources:
Instagram Help Center https://help.instagram.com/477434105621119
Boss, J (2013) ‘Freedom of Speech’ in Analysing Moral Issues, New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 509
Ward, 2011, ‘Approaches to Media Ethics’ in Ethics and the Media, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 67
Diamond, 2016, “Instagram Deleted My Account with 135K Followers. Zero Warning” in Peta Pixel https://petapixel.com/2016/09/14/instagram-deleted-account-135k-followers-zero-warning/
Balkin (2004) “Digital Speech and Democratic Culture” in New York University Law review, Vol 79
Twitter Help Center https://support.twitter.com/articles/15790
