Opinion: Mark Zuckerburg on Censorship
The First Amendment is a celebrated freedom for American citizens, who wear the right to speak their mind as a badge of honor.
Anytime censorship appears, an outcry is sure to follow. Twitter and Facebook were at the center of such an outcry this summer, which spurs a question: Do social media companies have the legal right to censorship? And if so, what do they have the ethical right to censor?
There is very little that social media companies should censor, and established political views are not one of them.
In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the Senate judiciary and commerce committees.
According to a USA Today article by William Cummings, Republican senators also questioned Zuckerberg about what many perceived as Facebook censoring conservative figures such as Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, also known as Diamond and Silk by decreasing the number of people who saw their media.
On Twitter, it appears to be harder to find conservative, Trump-supporting figures by entering their name in the search bar than it is to find prominent Democrats, according to USA Today.
Facebook and Twitter’s purported censorship is legal. Whether it is ethical or not is another matter.
During his testimony, Zuckerberg explained that Facebook monitors content to make sure it is not harmful or dangerous and that it is beneficial and truthful. This is admirable. Certain things that most people object to, like blatantly false information, explicit images and language, terrorist propaganda and widely acknowledged hate speech, should be censored for everyone’s benefit.
The problem is, everyone’s definitions of harmful, dangerous, beneficial and truthful are slightly different. Therefore, it is ultimately unhelpful and even harmful to censor something that only a certain group of people find offensive.
Even though Facebook and Twitter’s alleged censorship of conservative media may have been well intentioned and legal, it was not right. Individuals and organizations should not be censored for their political views.