Through all the times big corporations like Twitter, Google were immune to the lawsuits against them regarding the content posted on each of their platforms. However, current legal cases are about to change this.
There are always battles between Republicans and Democrats, between right and left about the censorship on the Internet. Nowadays, the regulations of blocking content are not really understandable for a lot of people. Some unharmful posts can be deleted, while disturbing pictures still remain in place. So, the debates about how to make the Internet field not a paradise, but not hell at the same time, are on the stage.
This summer is considered to be decisive for the companies in the US, thus, in the European Union. The aim of the justices is to review all the existing cases and come with the legislations and systems that would prevent people from posting/seeing disturbing content, while still having a freedom of speech.
One of the most recent lawsuits was made against Twitter. Several antisemitic posts were noticed on the platform, that were indented to attack Jewish people and deny the Holocaust. Those posts breaking the law of Germany (from where they were posted) as well as breaking terms and conditions of Twitter. The users of the platform have expressed their feeling of being betrayed by the company after it was bought by Elon Mask.
Why was this post not deleted if it was violating terms and conditions of the platform?
The answer is rather easy. After Elon Mask’s purchase of Twitter, it was announced that the company is going to loosen rules and will stop banning so much of the content. The Campaign Against Antisemitism that was a close partner to the company said that the ‘laws’ of the firm started to fall apart after the shift of the ownership to the billionaire.
So, now we are approaching one of the biggest and most interesting changes when it comes to the censorship not only on platforms mentioned above, but also all over the Internet. A lot of people think that we should still leave space for the freedom of speech, as we want to build strong democracy, however this can threaten people life’s and feeling of safeness on the Internet.
While on the other side, we have the fact that banning ‘inappropriate’ content, can actually be difficult to implement, as there are no strict limitations of what is good or bad. Additionally, that would threaten one of the fundamental rights – the freedom of speech.
To read more about the thought on the topic: https://www.ft.com/content/131c1c6f-7adc-4217-b251-6e7e18570581