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You might have seen one of the more recent reports of social media abuse when Twitter released a statement saying that it will be removing posts that contain what it deems harmful or misleading on stories about vaccines. “Under the new rules, Twitter said it would remove tweets that suggest vaccines are used to cause harm to populations; false claims that have been widely debunked about the adverse impacts of receiving vaccines; and posts that suggest Covid-19 isn’t serious and therefore doesn’t warrant a vaccine,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
This month, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube announced a series of policies to block or limit the spread of what they consider conspiracy theories. YouTube now bans videos that support the QAnon theory. In October, the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging the company of abusing its dominance over smaller rivals by operating as an illegal monopoly. “The Google of today is a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet,” the complaint says. “For many years, Google has used anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising — the cornerstones of its empire.”
According to a recent Pew Research Center report, nine in ten Republicans, including independents, say it’s at least somewhat likely that social media platforms censor political viewpoints they find objectionable, up slightly from 85% in 2018.
Section 230 is at the center of many of these debates, as it protects social media outlets⏤with the understanding that they will not apply their weight to the scales as publishers. As Washington debates the Section 230 protective clause, social media outlets appear to be doubling down. We’ll take up the confusing and often misleading disinformation campaign on The Voice of a Nation.