Julia Dallas

After researching I found there are two main points of why people want censorship, or don’t want censorship of social media. The first point is that censoring social media is violating our freedom of speech and the second is that non-censoring spreads fake information.

One article from NBC News talks about how Instagram’s new sensitive content filter might limit content from social justice campaigns. “Ashlee Marie Preston, a Los Angeles-based activist and cultural commentator, said she keeps up with Instagram’s updates and noticed that engagement from her 400,000 followers had declined in the week since the control was implemented,” states the article. Not only is Instagram limiting freedom of speech, it’s also not allowing critical information to spread. Many people get their news from social media and limiting what people see only adds to a skewed idea of news.

On the other hand, limiting information can be important when that information is false or fear mongering. An article in Forbes talks about how President Biden tried to censor false information pertaining to the COVID vaccine. “Biden has blamed misinformation for stalling U.S. vaccine rates, and suggested, “They’re killing people,” when asked what his message was to the social networks for allowing misleading claims to spread,” states this article. There is so much fake news on social media that there should be a task force dedicated to sifting through this information because it could affect someone’s life.

My personal opinion is that content should be censored or removed if it is fake news and if it incites violence. I think the rest of the censoring should be up to the user. I like that Instagram implemented a sensitive content filter, but I did not like that it automatically put it on everyone’s account. People should have the choice to censor, or not censor their content. However, Instagram definitely needs to work on their reporting system. I have had multiple friend’s pictures taken and made into fake accounts that say they sell nude images. Many people have reported the fake account to Instagram, but it is still up. Instagram has so many of these fake accounts that they take months to respond. They need more people responding to their reports and taking down these accounts.  

Something I have researched in the past is sex trafficking and how many children are online due to non-censoring. The reason it is so popular and widely available is because there are many sites that allow for this content. There are organizations working to stop this type of content, but more effort needs to be put into dismantling these sites.