Imagine scrolling through your social media feed, expecting funny videos of cats. Instead, you get a video of someone creating inappropriate images of Taylor Swift with AI. Scrolling down, you see racist posts with slurs and terrible pictures. You would be appalled. Scared, even. The worst part is? This could be the future. The Supreme Court debated in late February whether or not to disband the rights of social media platforms to censor their content.
In 2021, Texas and Florida passed laws where private social media platforms would not be allowed to take down undesirable posts. Both state governments passed these laws with the basis of their argument being that the censorship of bad posts is a violation of the users’ First Amendment rights.
The lawsuits raised the attention of the Supreme Court and days worth of debates have ensued. One topic from these debates includes if whether or not Florida and Texas should have jurisdiction over the private companies.
“The justices will have to decide between radically different conceptions of what social media is. Are these platforms more like old-time phone companies: basically, open to everyone without filtering? Or, are they more like bookstores and newspapers, places that edit and curate information, that get the highest level of First Amendment protection?” Carrie Johnson wrote in an article.
Florida’s law specifically bans any of the platforms from banning users' accounts because of their viewpoints, and Texas’ law prevents any content that a user has posted from being taken down. This means that literally any comment or picture someone wants to post will be there, with no repercussions.
“I think that there should be censors on all social media platforms. Social media is growing in popularity among younger generations, and without sensors 10-year-olds would have access to anything. Racism, sexism, stereotypes, etc. would become more frequent and normalized among people. We already have ridiculous stereotypes and prejudice against groups of people. If people were able to post whatever, social media platforms would be filled with critics and even more social issues,” Newtown High School sophomore Phoebe Jones said.
The laws were passed right after the January 6th U.S. Capitol attacks, which is not a coincidence. Donald Trump’s social media accounts had been locked and many other Trump supporters on social media were angry. The number of registered Republican voters in Florida has risen by 1 million in 10 years, and the southern states have also been known to be conservative since the establishment of the United States of America.
In addition, many of these platforms will suffer from the mixing of viewpoints. If the platform is pro-Semitic and another user has anti-Semitic comments and posts everywhere, they’ll lose a lot of business and support, which could rock the U.S stock market. Facebook and Instagram set a new record of adding 200 billion dollars to the market value in a single day. If 200 million users were to completely stop using these platforms, the stock market could crash.
NHS sophomore Kayla Locke said that she would be one of the users to stop using the platforms if these laws were passed.
“Yes, because that’s an invasion of privacy and rights,” Locke said.
The government has blocked the laws for now, but the lawsuits that are in the Supreme Court right now are to get these laws reinstated. Several justices have even brought up the fact that states have violated the First Amendment themselves, as they are censoring the private platforms' choice of what speech can be allowed on their databases.
Justice Elena Kagan said the major platforms had good reasons to reject posts inciting insurrection, endangering public health and spreading hate speech. “Why isn’t that a First Amendment judgment?” she asked.
Saying and doing what you believe in is great, as it means you have your own opinions and thoughts on the world. But when you start to infringe upon others rights, then issues arise. Opening up all of these platforms, Facebook, Instagram, even Venmo, to the vast majority of opinions in the world today would be like setting off a chain reaction to the downfall of humanity. With AI and cyberbullying becoming more and more rampant, it would be a terrible idea to reinstate these laws. For now, they will continue to stay on hold, but the Supreme Court will continue to debate the fate of the Internet as we know it.
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