Thursday 15 November 2012

Do You Believe That There Should Be More Control Over Social Media?

  • I believe that sharing sites such as Reddit should be better moderated. Sub-Reddits such as Creepshot and Jailbait are a clear invasion of peoples privacy and should be removed by the creators of the website, the creators and moderators of Reddit often claim that monitoring offensive Sub-Reddits is not thier business as Reddit is largly auser created site and moderating Sub-Reddits would be imposing unfair restrictions on the Reddit community. While I understand their argument and don't believe that they should censor their website for profanity or legal forms of pornography I also believe that the creators have a responsibility to remove illegal activity from the site such as Creepshots and child pornography.
  • While I sympathise with cases such as Amanda Todd I also believe that people need to realise that cases such as Amanda Todd are isolated incidents, cyber bullying is a serious problem that needs to be addressed but it is extremely rare that people experience depression or even harm themselves due to cyber bullying. The media and tabloid newspapers will often jump at the chance to exploit a story such as Amanda Todd's to appeal to the paranoia of their audience and often an issue such as cyber bullying can be made to look much more damaging and wide spread than it really is.
  • I support the idea of exposing trolls to the public, some argue that this method is no better than trolling itself but that is precisely why I think it is a good idea, if you expose the troll to the public and they recieve criticism for their actions they will know how it feels to be abused online and will fully comprehend how much pain online bullying can cause. Also, similar to the "Scared Staright" programs in American prisons, the online outing of trolls will be a warning to others that these are the consequences that you could face if you bully someone online.
  • I believe that some people need to realise that online abuse and opinions that they do not agree with are just a feature of free speech that we have to get used to. For example when gay marriage was legalised in the state of New York the Fox News online forums were filled with offensive messages from homophobic users of the website threatening homosexuals,while I fully support gay rights and have absolutely no respect for the homophobic users of the Fox News forums I would not try to censor their beliefs, online or anywhere else as this would essestially be facism; I would be forcing my beliefs on other people, if I have the right to support gay marriage then other people should have just as much right to oppose it. Just because somebody disagrees with someone elses belief that does not mean that that persons beliefs are wrong. Free speech means just that; you are free to say what you want, and the great feature about free speech is that if you disagree with someones opinion you have the right to disagree with them.
  • It is important to allow people to express their opinions but also monitor people for offensive statements. The case of Azhar Ahmed is a prime example, I believe that if Ahmed had worded his Facebook message more appropraitely then his case would not have been as controversial. If he had been fair and balanced in his message and stated his reasons and evidence for not supporting British soldiers in a civilised manner, that would have been perfectly acceptable as an opinion. Instead Ahmed merely stated "All soldiers should die and go to hell". The Facebook message that he actually posted was a sweepingly derogatory term where he offered no evidence to back up his argument and generalised all British soldiers, I believe that his actions were very foolish and he has discredited people who have legitimate reasons for not supporting British soldiers. Ahmed's case is a prime example of why society needs to find a comfortable middle groundwith censorship, a lack of censorship would mean that Ahmed would get to voice his opinions in a manner that is offensive as he did, too much censorship would mean that Ahmed would not have been able to voice his opinion at all.
  • Reddit moderator Yishan Wong condemed Adrian Chen for outing an online troll saying, "We stand for free speech, we are not going to ban distasteful Sub-Reddits". I fully support free speech but I also support peoples right to privacy, saying that banning a sub-reddit would be a violation of free speech is just a defence for not eliminating popular sections of Reddit that provide the owners of Reddit with revenue. The owners and creators of Reddit seem to be the worst kind of Vulture Capitalists, they allow offensive sections of their website to remain open to the public purely because it generates their revenue, any human being with common decency would remove sections of their website that contain child pornography and unconsensual pornographic photographs. If we allow users of Reddit to post illegal and offensive material with the defence of "it's their right to free speech" the owners of Reddit will continue to make money off of illegal material being postedon their website, everybody has their right to free speech but when people take advantage of that right by using it to post illegal pornography on the internet with no consequences this is when some steps need to be taken to ensure that people are not posting and making profits off of other peoples suffering.

1 comment:

  1. An excellent homework showing great critical autonomy. Well done Sam.

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