Twitter issued a statement in
January of 2018 which declared their policy-written power. The blog post
clarified the ability to delete any comment they wish- be it from a
head-of-state or your Aunt Sally. (3) Twitter disclosed they would not,
however, delete an entire account- unlike Facebook. (1) Twitter argues, they
were not issuing a threat; The company wishes to foster a healthy and safe
environment, free from “trolls” “bots” and types of ‘phobic harassment. (2) The
social media site posted, “Today, we use policies, human review processes, and
machine learning to help us determine how Tweets are organized and presented in
communal places like conversations and search.” (2) Specifically, the company
plans to monitor for multiple account sign-ups under the same email.
This implementation has been
twisted by our Commander and Chief, backed by the Attorney General. In 2016,
electoral candidate Trump made claims that social media platforms were
restricting conservative views- by “rigging” search results. (8) This stems
from; the removal of Alex Jones from Facebook; claims that google “rigged”
search results to limit conservative information; as well as over 50,000
Russian “bots” that posted propaganda to try to skew the 2016 presidential
election. (5) Although censorship is the correct verbiage for twitter’s actions,
its definition has been taken to the extreme- rather than what it means
literally. Twitter is simply preventing users from offending the majority of
the site’s community, by monitoring and removing harmful content. (2)
The question remaining, is what ethical
codes were broken, if any? Kantianism argues for truth, that information be
available to all- good or bad. Individualism’s main goal is to maximize profit
within the limits of the law. Utilitarianism’s ethical framework is of overall
happiness, it is a business’ responsibility to ensure the most pleasure over an
elongated period of time. Virtue theory is founded in acting in such a way so
as to avoid negative character traits, such as hate and dishonesty.
According to the Chicago Tribune,
Twitter makes money by selling advertisement space, and advertisements are
aligned with user preferences. (9) Therefore, more users generally means more
revenue. Twitter’s idea to monitor posting and ensure a safe environment is in
theory supposed to prevent the loss of users, and thus keep turning a profit.
So in theory, the move to censor feeds is ethical in the case of
individualism.
Utilitarianism would urge for more
measures to be taken in order to remove such offensive content. It would even
take twitter’s plans further and perhaps block Trump’s account to maximize
overall happiness. As twitter is enforcing censorship now, it may be minimal
but the effort is in place to maximize user happiness.
Kantianism would argue that the
information should be available site-wide, no matter the content and that
people should be treated as an ends in themselves, not a mere means. It should
be up to the users themselves to report content as offensive. It is not the
company’s responsibility to define what is acceptable or not, because not
everyone will have the same standards of acceptable behavior. In this case,
twitter is being unethical in the sense that the public has not had the chance
to decide for themselves what may be acceptable or not.
Twitter attempted to keep within
ethical boundaries to an extent. With the exception of Kantianism, the company
has overall found an ethical balance in censorship. However, their
implementation was weak initially, as they made very little public statements regarding
their new procedures- outside of their own blog. It is important to address the
media before it addresses the company! This gives the upper
hand so to speak. Although twitter would have to call out the fact that their
current implementations are failing, the important part is that they are fixing
the problem. This is how any great company succeeds; honesty and ethics are
balanced upon the shoulders of the operations.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
3. Candeub, A Epstein, M. (11/7/17 ).Keep TwitterAccountable Without Censorship. Wall Street Journal
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