{"id":753,"date":"2020-02-06T11:03:49","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T08:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/?p=753"},"modified":"2022-10-13T16:10:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T13:10:48","slug":"how-to-negotiate-personal-freedoms-and-social-media-regulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/2020\/02\/06\/how-to-negotiate-personal-freedoms-and-social-media-regulation\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Negotiate Personal Freedoms and Social Media Regulation?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anteri Pastila<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This blog post was produced as\npart of the course \u201cSocial Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States\u201d\nat the University of Turku.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best thing about social media is that it gives\neveryone a way to voice out their opinions and thoughts. The worst thing about\nsocial media is that it gives everyone a way to voice out their opinions and\nthoughts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have often quoted the observation<\/a> by philosopher David Hume: \u201c[A]s FORCE [sic] is\nalways on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them\nbut opinion.\u201d That is to say that especially in today\u2019s society, the population\nis controlled by controlling their opinion, and, when it comes to social media,\nit is easy to see that social media is just one more corner of society that can\nbe controlled. I must note that there are many ways social media can be\ncontrolled, ranging from taxation of the tech giants to controlling the\nmaterial allowed on these platforms. I will focus on the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeff Jarvis draws<\/a> a parallel between aims to control harmful speech today and aims to\ncontrol porn in the past, claiming that \u201c[b]oth are wars over speech.\u201d Jarvis\u2019\narticle raises a central issue: how to define harmful speech? And who is to define\nit? Personally, I do not think harmful speech can be clearly defined; there are\nsimply too many factors at play in each (potential) case. Jarvis posits yet\nanother question: \u201c[w]ho is being protected?\u201d I have observed that argumentation\nin support of legislation that would affect speech is often accompanied by\nconcern for different groups of people. This has been the case with political\ncorrectness, where the primary concern used to be the violation of Christian\nmorals within the general population, and nowadays it is mostly about the\nposition of ethnic and racial minorities. There are many sentiments, including\none in Jarvis\u2019 article, which describe these concerns as elitist. The idea is\nthat a group cannot fend for itself, and that they need \u201cme\u201d to fight for them.\nIn another words, that group is weak, and \u201cI\u201d am strong. Furthermore, this line\nof thinking aims to preserve the power dynamic between these entities. As\nbenevolent as these concerns may be, they do not necessarily seek to equalize\nthe society. The similarities between political correctness and calls to\ncontrol harmful speech online are uncanny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One aspect of the call for censorship is the\nunderlying assumption that deplatforming actually removes the problem. It does\nnot. The users of the banned medium or website can simply start using another\nwebsite. \u201cOut of sight, out of mind\u201d goes the proverb. Perhaps so, but the\n(perceived) problem still remains. Let me quote Stephen Fry: \u201cI believe one of\nthe greatest human failings is to prefer to be right than to be effective.\u201d Fry\nsaid these words in a debate<\/a> on political correctness, but they fit in this context as well. It is\nfine for policies to have a goal of making things right. However, that should\nnot be their first priority. The policies should, first and foremost, aim to be\neffective.  Fry adds further: \u201cProgress\nis not achieved by preachers and guardians of morality, but [\u2026] by madmen,\nhermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and sceptics.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, most of this comes down to personal freedoms. Regarding these freedoms, my favourite stand-up comedian George Carlin once mentioned that American citizens having rights is an illusion. He used the example of Japanese-Americans in 1942 to argue that these rights can always be taken away, in which case they are not rights, but privileges. \u201cAnd\u201d, Carlin said, \u201cif you read the news even badly, you know that every year, the list [Bill of Rights] gets shorter and shorter and shorter.\u201d Unfortunately, it would seem that the \u201cgovernors,\u201d to employ Hume\u2019s expression, have been prevailing for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carlin, George. 2008. It\u2019s Bad For Ya<\/em>; You Have No Rights<\/em>. Atlantic Records. Accessed online: https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/7ylXUHXIapLAsGfjPo3JCB<\/a> (Listening requires an account.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anteri Pastila This blog post was produced as part of the course \u201cSocial Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States\u201d at the University of Turku. The best thing about social media is that it gives everyone a way to voice out their opinions and thoughts. The worst thing about social media is that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-students-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}