Social Media and Free Speech
Social media remains an ideal platform for connecting people and facilitating communication between individuals and institutions. Celebrities, international users, political dissidents, and commercial institutions use the platform to share information with the public. Since these sites engage people from all cultures, they experience a free speech, which might hinder the ethical requirements that might lead to cyberbullying and other abusive activities. Although social media allows many people to interact on a single platform, it can develop audience-centered policies to control its free speech to stop incessant activities like cyberbullying.
Addressing Ethical Concerns
The media can provide audience-centered policies that address the issue of ethics in free speech. When this media remains without sufficient controls, members can misuse it to spur ethnic and regional violence through promoting hate speech. However, the sites should have rules and regulations whose punishments entail short time and longtime suspensions to discourage persistent offenders from continuing to interfere with sections of the public (Diem). In this way, social media will have managed to apply policies to control the bad habits of its users in a move that can thwart them from continuing to disappoint the vast array of its users.
Discouraging Abuse and Violence
Formulation of effective policies for social media users will discourage acts of violence in the form of cyberbullying and its associated abusive activities. Specifically, careless use of free speech is leeway for the evolution of acts of violence where people use threats and falsification of identity to molest others. If specific sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Instagram can develop strong policies to enlist and mark users that intimidate others, they can go a long way to fast track and halt the spread of unethical acts (Lipschultz). Therefore, the rules that owners of social media websites enact have a direct effect on the behaviors that users these sites adopt while associating with the public.
The Importance of Policies
In brief, free speech exists among users of social media sites but the care they exercise while using it to interact determines the length of time to which they can continue enjoying the services of the platforms. Apparently, the kind of policies formulated for social media sites will decide if people will continue to carry out acts of violence in the form of cyberbullying and transmission of hate speech. With adequate control, many people will associate with the sites because they will have a feeling of being secure. In fact, high profile individuals like celebrities, political figures, and business marketers will find the sites attractive to run their campaigns.
Works Cited
Diem, Noel. “Freedom of Speech and Social Media.”
Law Street. December 10 2014, www.lawstreetmedia.com/issues/law-and-politics/freedom-of-speech-social-media/. Accessed 16th March 2018.
Lipschultz, Jeremy Harris. “Social Media and the First Amendment.” Huff Post, (2017, December 6), www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-harris-lipschultz/social-media-and-the-first-amendment_b_4976694.html. Accessed 16th March 2018.
