Should social media go on lockdown?

Personally, I am torn.

Freedom of speech is important to me. People should be able to say what they want to say.

But at the same time, we have laws that prohibit certain speech (for example, calls to violence).

I can't help but feel social media is not only blowing things out or proportion, but adding to fear and dragging it on for longer.

*I guess what I am trying to say is this: if the cons of social media so vastly outweigh the benefits (and I think they do), is social media even worth having around?

The thing about freedom of speech for people is that people get tired. You can have someone standing outside a courthouse or police station saying "Police are terrible" for six hours, but eventually he goes home, and his audience is limited.

Social media does not go home, it does not turn off. It does not have a limited audience.

Hell, yes!

I would absolutely love if social media was dead. Nothing about it is good.

Shut it down temporarily. It’s calling out protests that turn into riots, it’s gives a voice to outlets like cnn that purposely promote fake news just because they don’t like the president, and it’s gone as far as falsely fact checking the president. Something is clearly wrong with modern social media.

Social media has nothing to do with free speech. They can impose their own rules. And they should remove offensive content. Which includes deliberate misinformation. I'm talking about you donnie.

It's a subject that while I think something needs to be done I'm not sure what that might be. Locking away the internet isn't it though, I feel.

This is how I feel. I'd say smarter people than me should take a stab at it, but I think we all know the only people that would attempt to regulate it are old-fart politicians that have no business regulating anything in the 21st century.

This is true, and I agree they should removal misinformation, however there are actual laws surrounding this that makes it tricky.

I wish I could find the article about it, but it was concerning the Twitter-Trump feud; the short version is that if Twitter does not "censor" they can hide behind free-speech laws, but the second they start to pick and choose what to allow people to say, they go from a social media outlet to a journalistic outlet, and are therefore subject to more scrutiny.

I know people use social media for a lot of stuff, but a.) I haven't been on Facebook for like three years, and b.) I only use Instagram to look at hot chicks in cosplay, food pics, and cute pictures of cats lol.

I could live without it.

are you asking if an outside authority like the government should have the authority to shut down social media?

i'd lean to no on that because it's a VERY slippery slope you're on there...

The 1st amendment forbids the government from doing that.

However, the social media companies themselves can do it, and frequently should, as leaving it alone is the same as being complicit.

It’s complicated. When used properly, social media is great. But when used for hate and spreading dumb ass conspiracy theory crap (what Donnie does), it becomes not so great.

It is a slippery slope, but so is not doing anything.

It's definitely a tough issue for me personally, for or against it seems relatively equal.

As I mentioned earlier, there are some restrictions on free speech.

Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising.

You could easily argue that many of the people using social media are guilty of doing the bolded above.

I feel a lot of people focus more on what the Bill of Rights allows and less on what it does not allow. It goes both ways; sure, you have have "free speech" but there are limits. Don't abuse it.

It really is complicated haha. I can't even make up my own damn mind.

I think the companies need to take more responsibility, "fact check" as Twitter says, and take appropriate action.

The issue of course is you have people who won't like that and then make a big stink out of it.

So I feel because of that, it needs to be all or nothing; shut it down (during periods of unrest), or leave it alone entirely.

@mrbojangles25: Thanks!

Lockdown? Not the best way to handle Social Media in my opinion.

The solution isn't to use executive orders, it's to use legislation like Congress has discussed. Nobody wants Twitter and friends making their own rules. It does not surprise me to hear that twitter put such a person on their policing team. Twitch did something similar recently with their "safety advisory council" recently, and we know the history of other similar issues. I wouldn't put any trust in the tech companies.

I'd rather the people using social media acquire some common sense.

I would rather that happen too, but if my job has taught me anything, it's that you need to remove the human factor as much as you can otherwise it's just screw up after screw up after screw up.

Which is why I feel just shutting it down in times of turmoil is ok. Someone makes a joke, they're taken seriously; someone says metaphorically we need to smash the state, people take it literally. And so on and so on.

We can't afford that kind of ambiguity.

Fvck no. It's the only way all the stories about the protests and police brutality is getting out. All the major traditional media networks in the US are owned by private capital, and are obviously biased towards their owners and are only showing select photos and videos of what's going on, and are barely sharing POC views on the situation.

So long as social media remains privately owned, they are fully entitled to limit whatever they want on their platform, and if people don't agree, they'll migrate to another platform.

No. But the far right should be banned from using it.

No.

But I do think Twitter's 280 character limit can piss right off.

^ That is a timeline of brain cells dying.

See it's a downright affront to waste another Twit's time on more than one dimension of an idea, because multiple tweets are a pain to deal with, and there's already limited space to get your punch in for the team. You've certainly not got enough space for nuance or calm, rational discussion... but they have provided a handy ego breadcrumb counter, so that a bunch of people you don't really know can assess your opinions for you, in real time.

It's a pretty damn efficient social conditioning tool, when you think about it.

Ugh, you're right.

Yes, especially Twitter they have this one user on there that cries about everything I hear he lives in a bunker.

Not at all.

Just let them keep moderating garbage.

Yes, they have a STRONG anti-intellectual vibe. And epitomize the post-truth era we live in (Not just politics). But they also give established media competition.