There’s been a debate rumbling on for some time regarding the major social media platforms. It seems that they’re wrong if they do and wrong if they don’t.
I’m talking about removing posts that are not considered truthful. The problem with social media is that we can all be journalists but without doing any investigative work or research.
Users can, and do, repost articles from both within these platforms and from outside sources without checking if they’re actually factual. We’ve all got a built-in bias and tend to echo material that fits our own ideology – that applies to many areas of life, not just politics.
Since the US election there’s been something of an exodus from the two major platforms – Facebook and Twitter – by right-leaning folks who feel that these platforms are censoring conservative material unfairly. The networks respond by saying that they’re just removing material that is clearly false.
Are they removing any left-leaning posts in the same way? If not, why not? Perhaps there are more dubious conservative postings than liberal ones? Either way, the arguments are not going to stop anytime soon.
It’s the problem that arises when everyone can be their own journalist and publisher, and it’s probably here to stay. My view is that with freedom of speech, surely comes the responsibility to be truthful. The issue there is that everyone’s version of the truth can be different.