Harmful Content and Hate Speech

        That's Offensive!

 

        Often, the claims made in support or defense of censorship boil down to "harmful content" or "hate speech". Nowhere is that more true than on the most popular social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Each of those sites has a long history of vague terms, biased authority, and censorship. Nowhere do they have guidelines of what is to be interpretted as innapropriate or harmful, and nowhere do they have guidelines for what constitutes hate speech. Let's take a look at how each site operates.

"This video is unavailable with Restricted Mode enabled."

        YouTube is by far one of the most horrible opressors of free speech in the modern world. How did it all start? The first problem YouTube ran into was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In its first year, YouTube complied with over 30,000 copyright related takedown requests. Shortly thereafter, YouTube ran into regional problems. Opressive countries like Thailand and China completely blocked YouTube. In order to be financially viable in those countries, YouTube implemented regional censorship. Over the many years since its debut, YouTube has changed its policy several times, blocking more and more content. And each time the rules become even more vauge. Recently, Google has implemented several new features: Restricted Mode, Limited State, and YouTube Heroes. Not to mention, YouTube content creators have been demonotized for little to no reason, and their videos have even been deleted.

"#StopHateSpeech #SocialJustice #PoliticallyCorrect"

        Unlike Google, Twitter has taken it almost completely upon themselves to police the internet. They don't need the government to tell them to censor their users. They'll do it anyway! Twitter has a long history of muting and banning users for comments that may have offended people in the slightest way. Here is just one example of an ideological difference that prompted Twitter to lock someone's account. You can find more records of Twitter's censorship here.

"Like, Share, and Follow or you're a biggot!"

        After the last election cycle in France and the United States, allegations began to mount about the existence and effectiveness of so-called "fake news". Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell what is actually fake news or what is just something Facebook disagrees with. As of right now, Facebook labels "fake news" as such, but there are plans to remove it entirely. Read more here.