Denninger Addresses Social Media Censorship and Misinformation
Posted Feb 6, 2024
As social media censorship has become a salient issue in recent years, it poses a threat to the American political process and its status as a democracy. Soft censorship—the removal or editing of content—is the most prominent form. The most obvious example of this censorship involves social media posts on COVID-19 and election interference in recent elections. In an attempt to determine the best way to promote a vibrant discourse necessary for democracy, Erilynn Denninger wrote a white paper entitled “Navigating the Digital Divide: A Solution for Social Media Censorship” for her senior thesis.
Though not designed as a news source, approximately fifty-five percent of Americans use social media to obtain news. Currently, section 203 (c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act protects interactive computer services from legal liability when it comes to harmful content posted by third parties and enables social media platforms to regulate and moderate their own content. Furthermore, they are not held liable if they choose not to remove content so long as the content does not violate federal law or incite immediate violence such as human trafficking or child abuse.
A concern is that over time political actors and their content will increasingly become the main subjects of removal. In 2023, seventy-five percent of American adults believed it to be likely that social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints that they find objectionable. Soft censorship seems to be rampant in the forms of editorial rejections, deletions of posts or accounts, and edits of content. Censorship becomes a problem when the content being censored would normally be protected by the First Amendment. Some level of censorship is necessary for public safety, promoting order, community standards, and individual privacy, but to what extent can social media platforms choose to limit freedom of speech?
In just two prominent examples, censorship has been documented concerning the 2020 Biden campaign team as well as the COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, Twitter revealed that during the 2020 pandemic, researchers at Stanford University partnered with several government-funded nonprofits to work with social media platforms to flag and suppress information that contradicted public health officials. And on September 8, 2023, a federal appeals court held that the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment by pressuring or coercing social media platforms to remove posts that did not hold the administration’s approval.
The consequences of media censorship are both short and long-term. Immediate consequences include self-censorship, lower citizen participation, and limited access to crucial information. A deeper, enduring fear is that censorship would be used as a political weapon in which governments and corporations will exploit content moderation to suppress dissent, opposition, or criticism.
Productive solutions to censorship must first evaluate their impact on American democracy, including the promotion of law and order, freedom of speech, and the sustainment of a free and fair election process. A second concern is political feasibility, which involves evaluating the attainability and implementation of a solution in the current polarized political climate. A third criterion must consider how effective a solution will be at curbing censorship.
Denninger then assessed three common solutions to social media censorship. First, some suggest reclassifying social media companies as public utilities. Since everyone uses social media, they are forms of a monopoly and making them a utility would make them subject to the First Amendment and remove their ability to censor content. Some object to this proposal because social media companies are not monopolies because new platforms can replace old ones, making them a monopoly would reduce innovation and competition in public discourse which is necessary for a democracy, and it might make it too difficult to prevent misinformation and hate speech.
Second, some propose a free market solution. The idea is that if one social media company begins to censor information, then people will flock to a new social media company that does not. When the company begins to lose large numbers of customers, then they have an incentive to alter their policies to promote free speech. The major concern with this approach is that this will cause misinformation to spread more easily, hate speech to flourish, foreign interference in elections easier. Others are concerned that social media companies might work in concert with each other to adopt similar restrictive policies which would lead to an imperfect market.
Third, Denninger concluded that legislation requiring social media companies to publish their moderation policies and algorithms and remain consistent in the processes they describe was the best approach. Both political parties have an interest in this information because both face censorship through the impacts of algorithmic amplification. Algorithmic exposure would constrain the desire for political control because both parties would lose the incentive to pressure social media companies into amplifying one narrative or removing content specifically threatening to their agenda. As this issue continues to gain attention, solutions must be implemented to protect democracy and the First Amendment rights of the American people.