History Repeats: Political Censorship, Twitter and Joe Biden

Social media censorship has become a key issue at a time when 62 percent of American adults get their news from platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

The long-standing argument at tech giants such as these has been that these platforms are purely just that, platforms, and that they are not responsible for the nature of content that they distribute.

In recent years, though, whether due to political scandals, election rigging, or the distribution of violent and horrific content — such as the Christchurch shooting — platforms, buoyed on by political pressures, are taking a more active role in policing what is shared. Facebook currently employs about 15,000 content moderators who spend all day deciding what can and can’t be on Facebook.

Initially, moderators, as well as algorithms, were deployed to flag content that was violent or considered outright abhorrent by most standards of human decency. In fact, some of the content witnessed by moderators has been so devastating that they’ve developed PTSD, prompting Facebook to agree to pay an in principle sum of US$52 million in damages.

Removing shootings and porn is one thing. Extending these powers to discriminately censoring political content, and influencing hearts and minds in the process, is another.