The Future of Social Media
Social media status is not what it used to be. The last bastion of free expression was attacked.
(1) Free flow of information and ideas
Social media has changed the way we access information from news. This is one of the reasons why, in recent years, social media has been accredited by a growing audience. This is good for our society, because one of the keys to democracy is the free flow of information and ideas. Access to a wide range of information allows the citizens to fully participate in public life. Without access to information, people cannot understand the role of government and decisions are made on their behalf.
The Internet made exchanging views about everything easier. This has drawn much attention to the way in which political bias and the journalist's behavior affects our public life. News and information are no longer mediated by news editors and TV producers. As a result, traditional news platforms have been completely smoked out by social media users with smartphones.
(2) Regulating social media
So, it is not surprising that news companies and politicians are worried and want the government to regulate social media. They want to place social media under political control because they know that today's audience will not cooperate as it used to.
In fact, in the early 1990s, the Internet emerged as a real possibility of free access to information. However, it was a "short summer". By the mid-1990s, those who believed in the "utopian promises" of the Internet realized that virtual environments quickly became a threat to corporations and governments.
A massification of the Net was almost inevitably set in and the opinions of public newsgroups began to be filtered out. Why? Both ill-informed individuals and arrogant companies have begun to send spam messages and ads to public forums. Communication has become something of private concern. As noted by many analysts, the effect of this has been a lack of confidence in the public sphere of cyberspace.
(3) Concerns for those who seek to protect the status quo
Social media began in the early 2000s, and have changed the world. Quick changes like these always raise concerns for those who seek to protect the status quo. Social media platforms have become titans who control the primary avenues for public discourse. They naturally began "fact-checking" opinions. On average, millions of messages are posted every day. Do you think they can review each of these posts to check facts and determine which ones are accurate (don’t laugh)? This is definitely an impossible task. They should be promoting open forums for debate, but they seem to be using their power to censor viewpoints that they do not like. They are not neutral. Recent academic studies show that online space is divided into left-leaning and right-leaning clusters.
It is a sad fact about our culture that it is repeated over and over again. Democracy is an ideal that needs to be pursued day after day. Today, social media is biased. I do not support the government latest attempts to control social media. But I do not support either these behemoths to "fact-check" opinions at their convenience. Social media can definitely be abused. But we got the constitutional law to restrain the abuse.
It is a sad fact about our culture that it is repeated over and over again. Democracy is an ideal that needs to be pursued day after day. Today, social media is biased. I do not support the government latest attempts to control social media. But I do not support either these behemoths to "fact-check" opinions at their convenience. Social media can definitely be abused. But we got the constitutional law to restrain the abuse.
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