Should social media companies police political speech if it poses a threat to public health or public safety?
Social media has become more prominent because of the pandemic.
Social media is an essential tool for political campaigns. With the 2020 election happening during a pandemic and limiting politicians ability to engage with voters in person, social media networking has become even more significant. But while social media works as an efficient way to disseminate information to large audiences, serious problems arise when information is misleading or inherently false.
This week, Facebook removed a post by President Donald Trump where he claimed the flu was more deadly than COVID-19. Twitter also flagged the post for containing misleading information and blocked it from being shared.
Facebook also blocked all pages and accounts associated with the far-right conspiracy group QAnon. The movement is responsible for spreading false claims that a network of Satan-worshipping pedophiles are plotting against President Trump.
Do social media companies have a responsibility to monitor political speech when it poses a threat to public health or public safety? To answer this question, we spoke with UConn Law and Anthropology Professor Richard A. Wilson, an expert on the First Amendment, hate speech and disinformation. Wilson is also a founding director of UConn’s Human Rights Institute. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:
Q: How have social media outlets changed the landscape of political campaigns?
Wilson: Social media has certainly become very prominent, but it’s only gained in prominence because of the pandemic. Both parties have been faced with the challenge to engage in a general election while not being able to run a campaign in the usual way with mass meetings, mass rallies, and large gatherings of people. That has only elevated the prominence of social media.
A lot of the contestation between parties is occurring on social media. There is a lot of money being spent on ads and those ads are tilted towards the interest of one party or the other. There’s a very delicate balance that social media companies have to find between allowing freedom of expression and disallowing disinformation or material that might in some way damage public health.
Q: What principles do social media companies use to determine whether or not to remove a post?
Wilson: All political election campaigns tell a partial truth, or they spin the truth in a way that helps their campaign. If something is factually incorrect, that still doesn’t imply that it needs to be removed. However, if that factual incorrectness is on a public health matter and could lead to widespread public health consequences, then the social media company is entitled at minimum to label the post.
Another reason to label or remove a post is if it incites violence. Incitement is a well-worn doctrine in criminal law, which says that you cannot directly advocate acts of violence or criminality with the intention that they are committed and with the likelihood that they are committed.
Social media companies are not governed by the First Amendment. They are private clubs and when you sign up to their terms of service you agree to abide by their rules. People who complain that their First Amendment rights are being suppressed on social media actually have no argument.
Q: How do social media companies monitor hate speech?
Wilson: Most of the content moderation is being done by automated tools. Those automated tools are often over-inclusive, so they end up removing speech that isn’t problematic. It can’t often, at least not yet, discern the context of a post.
Q: How has social media impacted young voters?
Wilson: If you look at the turnout of 18-25-year olds in 2016, it was very low compared to other age groups. Young people were not engaged in the last election and I hope that social media galvanizes them to organize and to go out and vote.
I think that’s likely to happen because of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Black Lives Matter protests were organized largely on social media. They were huge. They were the largest protests in American history. I hope that carries through to the election and we do see very high rates of participation amongst young people.
I hope that young people recognize that this election is like no other and it does have implications for the existence of our democracy.
UConn Law Professor Richard A. Wilson (Photo by Peter Morenus/UConn).
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