Reading 09

The topic on online censorship has both legal and moral consequences that must be addressed. First, if the United States were to implement a mass online censorship program, in many cases it would most likely infringe upon its citizens’ right to free speech. In addition, we must ask ourselves if we want to silence individuals whose only, or most effective, avenue of being heard is through the internet. That being said, based on my prior beliefs and the readings, I do believe it is okay go have some online censorship in specific situations such as in the fight against terrorism. I will return to this topic later. To me, it seems like online censorship is a very slippery slope and, for this reason, there must be only very specific situations in which it is okay.
Addressing the situations presented in the question, I do not believe that it is ethical for companies to remove dissenting opinions for governments. I understand this situation is simply a suppression of individuals beliefs in order for a governing body to keep its control and power. If a government is indeed doing something that its citizens feel is unjust or want to speak out about, I believe that they should have a platform to do so on the internet. For example, the reading How Facebook Censors Your Posts addresses the suppression of a video of a standoff with police and how the police acted. In cases like this, if someone feels they are wrongfully treated by the police, I think that that person has the right to let others know.  
I do believe, however that it is ethical for companies to remove information broadcasted by terrorism organizations. In these cases, terrorist groups are often trying to recruit individuals to their cause. As national security is at risk in these cases, and the terrorist group is undoubtedly trying to invoke violence, I do not see a positive side to letting this information onto our internet. Twitter and Facebook already address this issue as stated in the article, Twitter Suspends 300,000 Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017, “Twitter, along with Facebook Inc. and YouTube, are instead building automation tools that quickly spot troublesome content. Facebook has roughly 7,500 people who screen for troublesome videos and posts. It’s also funded groups that produce anti-extremism content that’s circulated on the social network.”
The question of if it is ethical for companies to remove discriminatory, provocative, or hateful content generated by its users is a little for tricky for me. I believe that everyone has a different standard for what it is discriminative or provocative to them. It seems unrealistic and impossible for everything that offends someone to be removed from the internet. That being said and returning back to why we should be able to censor terrorist organizations, I believe that if there is hateful content that clearly invokes violence, it is ethical to, and should be legal to remove it from the internet.
            All of that said, I do believe that online censorship is an important topic to discuss as it has both moral and legal implications. I do not necessarily worry about online censorship in my day to day life, but after reading these articles it definitely does seem like more of an issue than I had originally thought.

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