The events at the start of the year will have shook a lot of people, regardless of their political persuasion. 

As a ‘western democracy’ we expect a level of dignity to our political operations. However between Johnson proroguing parliament and Trump threatening those on Black Lives Matter marches, a storm on the most powerful office in the world was only a matter of time.

Aside from the forced entry, questions have also been asked, and in some ways answered, about whether there is a place on social media platforms, and the internet as a whole, for such hatred and incitement of violence.

That sounds like a ridiculous statement. Are we trying to find a space to offend and insult? A dark corner of the internet where the nastiness of humanity can be expelled? Probably not. But race riots, covid conspiracies and political plonkers have added a much needed context to the current discussion around whether social media, and more broadly the internet, should be regulated, who should do it, and where we draw the lines. 

If the last 12 months have shown us anything it’s the vast influence our Twitter feed and Facebook timeline have on our behaviour, and the dangers of spreading false information. Yet those companies and many more are protected but Section 230 of the Communications Act, passed into United States law, that loosely states that a website owner will not be viewed as the publisher of third party content on that site.

In effect this means that internet companies are not responsible for the things people post on their website, so Twitter and Facebook can not legally be punished for any of the incitements to violence or conspiracy theories that have cost lives. Unsurprisingly, much of Congress is looking to reform 230, to give businesses who profit from our time and attention more responsibility for the things we read on their platforms.

 

Freedom

However, with the very reasonable view that internet companies shouldn’t be blameless for the views expressed on their platforms, there is the bigger conversation to be had about freedom of speech.

Whatever comes from the reform or replacement of Section 230, there needs to be a balancing act between expression and regulation. It should go without saying that freedom of speech is a fundamental right in a democracy and needs to be protected. On the flip side, that very freedom is being used to excuse the offensive posts people write and, in my opinion, has birthed the idea of ‘Cancel Culture’ that is almost working as a self regulation of peoples offensive behaviour, all be it radically.

It’s a little depressing setting up this article, talking through the current predicament, it’s hard to argue that social media platforms are a source of negativity rather than a force for good. Our Twitter feeds have been a window into the thoughts we dare not say, only impeded by rhetorical gifs and the aforementioned ‘Cancel Culture’ that, in principle, should work on the logic that if you’re being offensive you shouldn’t be able to publish your vitrial, but in practice can be used to silence anyone with an opposing view.

I was always taught that rights come with responsibilities. The freedom to say whatever you like comes with the responsibility to restrain from saying unnecessarily offensive things. It seems, without the immediate repercussions of speaking our minds, we are much bolder in the things we say, testing the boundaries of tolerance before blaming our antagonists for being suspended. 

 

Regulation

Yet, over the course of a week, platforms have taken a stand, kicking the soon to be former US President off almost every social media platform after inciting what is now described as an attempted coup.

As many have pointed out already though, kicking Trump off twitter after four years of antagonistic tweets is a bit too little, too late, and some have called it opportunistic. 

I wouldn’t say that, and it’s easy to say that but it’s also important to remember that, at the start of the Trump campaign, Twitter was only just 10 years old. For anyone who doesn’t know the history, Twitter also went without a sustainable business model for four years, made a quarterly profit for the first time in 2018 and one of it’s chief creators, Noah Glass, also created Blogger and ran Twitter with the same ‘no intervention’ policy.

The point is Twitter has a history of taking a lot of time over big decisions that affect the business, such as moderation, but it has made some decisions, most notably flagging and even protecting Tweets that contain false information and threats in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder.

Even Parlour, the platform that houses more radical users, has been disrupted with Amazon Web Services pulling the plug on the infrastructure the app needs to survive. So the evidence would suggest that the industry is starting to regulate themselves. 

The question posed to congress is whether this sign of self regulation is enough. The example of AWS pulling it’s support for Parler’s app to work may be encouraging but the internet shouldn’t be controlled by private companies and their marketing team in the aftermath of political events.

The only option seems to be lawful regulation, yet that poses its own problem around freedom of speech and freedom of the press outlined in the first amendment. To set parameters around how a business should operate is a dangerous thing to do when that business poses discussions, breaks news and is fundamentally based on the written word.

In regulating a post, a lot of context and the use of language may need to be considered but any solution to moderate will either involve AI algorithms that are imperfect or humans that are inefficient and expensive. That’s without setting the parameters in the first place, which will either be too constricting or open to interpretation.

In the end no one will be happy, anything too restrictive will fly in the face of the first amendment, if the reform is too relaxed it won’t achieve what it needs to.

The thing to remember is that these social media companies are still in their infancy. Ten years of Donald Trump belching out lies may make it feel like longer but they are still working out what these platforms are and what they can do. That’s not to excuse the lack of moderation. But as recent as a year ago, the idea that Twitter and Facebook would moderate posts on their platform, outside of a time out or a ban, would have been laughed at. 

Now, we see these businesses take action after quite a scary start to the year. In terms of the future, ultimately we need these businesses to act responsibly. The question is whether they can before the next riot.