Category: Discussions (Page 6 of 21)

Whistleblower Frances Haugen has sparked a nation wide debate on the morals and behavior of the social media giant of Facebook. Haugen has expressed her distress for Facebook’s awareness of their role in spreading misinformation and literal physical violence in other uprisings in the world. Despite Facebook coming out and saying that they will combat the spread of dangerous misinformation, the team’s response has been proven to not be as effective. Additionally, Facebook has done its own research on the affects of the company on its users. These studies have concluded that when a user is presented with something that triggers rage, increased activity on the site always follows. When presented something that triggers joy, the user doesn’t engage with the platform as much. Knowing this Facebook uses this tactic to promote user interaction as much as possible to generate larger profits. Now, Francis Haugen vows to take legal action to get Facebook moderated by the government. This is either a very wrong step or useful experience for history. Handing out more power to the central government and giving them the ability to limit and censor speech sounds like a very unamerican move. However, big brother nowadays seems to not be the government but major social media networks like Facebook. Maybe having the government regulate major monopolies like Facebook may not be such a bad idea. But on the other hand, America grants its citizens free speech and just the very words of “hate speech” is a non-American belief. If we want to preserve free speech in America, hate speech or speech in general should never be dictated by the government as that is a freedom we will never get back. Facebook is an independent company and should have the right to control what gets posted on their site. This is a very interesting topic and I am honestly puzzled on where I stand on this argument.