Freedom of expression, copyright, and censorship

The article The Future of Free Speech, Trolls, Anonymity and Fake News Online, describes the growing influence of social media and its impact on the perceptions and beliefs of society at large. Due to the massive power of social media, the ability of institutions and organizations to influence the discourse on these platforms has become very impactful. According to the article 62% of Americans get their news from social media. Likewise the article illustrates how voting was swayed by Russians during the 2016 presidential election. Social media has also been linked to extremism as other terrorist groups looking to exploit a younger and much more vulnerable audience. Misinformation for example, can create a false narrative the feeds on itself and can be unsustainable at times. Society realized this with Donald Trump and his “alternative facts” which in reality where simply lies to the American public. The lies where recited so many times that society began to believe them and accept them as truth. In addition, his republican counterparts simply regurgitated these lies to further provide credibility to them. This misinformation campaign ultimately confused society and caused a large amount of contention internally (Rainie, 2017). This campaign of misinformation was in large part attributable to social media where misleading discourse was not properly filtered on the program.

Develop a policy to address the issues raised by your selected theme.

The first policy consideration is to adopt a governmental agency designed specifically to oversee any misinformation on social media platforms and determine if they are the result of purposeful attempts to undermine civilization. Another policy would be to establish the “Critical Election Incident Public Protocol” that will monitor and notify other agencies and the public about disinformation attempts. The task force and agency should be led by non-political officials. Research conducted by Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral (2018) revised false information spread on Twitter over the span of a decade (Vosoughi, 2018). They found information spread much faster than the corresponding true information, which created adverse circumstances for the platform to properly correct. They also found that individual accounts rather than bots or other automated profiles, spread this misinformation. As a result, networks will need to institute fact check programming to further validate and substantiate the claims made by users. This can occur through the use of misinformation detection algorithms, hiring experienced fact checkers, and instituting proper reporting features for self-policing by platform users

Discuss steps that individuals, online communities can take to address the issue

The first step that individuals must take is to hold communities accountable for misinformation. Although this is very unlikely to occur, consumers of media information should conduct their own due diligence before accepting what they hear or read on social media platforms. This is a critical element as many consumers of social media information typically are relegated to their own silos within the internet. They are often unwilling to accept evidence that runs counter to their prevailing wisdom or attributes. Likewise, they do not want to appear disloyal to their base of followers or friends. As a result, these individuals tend to stay entrenched within their own positions. Ultimately this undermines the critical thinking capacity of society.

To counteract this, platforms should leverage algorithms that can properly detect misinformation and inform users of the new process. Likewise all posts should have a “fact-check” feature to help further substantiate the claims made by users. Finally, the community should hold those that use misinformation accountable by reporting false claims or narratives that are not supported by research.

Support your analysis with one or more ethical frameworks (Utilitarianism)