Between the eight values of free expression, I have a hard time deciding which is most important in general and in todays world. Obviously the Marketplace of Ideas is the standard of free speech; if someone is speaking the truth against a falsehood, the truth will come out and it is the discussion/speech of the truth verse the falsehood that makes the truth that much more important. However, Stable Change is just as important but also (in my opinion) the one that not being fulfilled in a sense. Stable Change states that if a person or group has the ability to voice their concerns and issues, then they will be less likely to act on violent or dangerous behaviors because they will feel that they are at least being listened to in some way. However, we are now in a world where everyone can talk about whatever they like in a very public manner and it not exactly for the best.
Social Media has been important to the change of how people express them because of the globalization of it all. Before social media, you would really only be able to have discussions to those that were in the same area as you or you would read papers from towns and city that were in close proximity to you. But the idea that I can message someone in Italy and have a discussion about politics or societal issues just goes to show how far technology allows us to reach. Now I know that having internet discussions usually end up with the truth coming out in someway but it just feels like more and more people get hateful and mean when someone tries to show them the truth in their argument. It has come to the point where Facebook and Twitter have had to implement fact checkers on their sites just to insure that the truth is actually being spread around because of all of the fake new and trash that is actually being shared. But we have learned in class that this is also thanks to the U.S. government trying to censor what information we get and when.
A paper for the Journal of Economic Perspectives written by Hunt Allcott and Mathew Gentzkow state that “62 percent of US adults get news on social media … many people who see fake news stories report to believe them” (Allcott, Gentzkow 212). 62% of voting age adults who’s ages range from 18 to older are getting their news from a place where anyone can post anything. I know that the younger population obviously would getting their news from a source that they know but the number of baby boomers that are using Facebook and Twitter now are increasing.
My grandmother, for instance, literally believes anything that is posted on Facebook. I received a message from her about how Facebook Messenger is going to kidnap your children and family. Which is the complete opposite of the truth.
Social media is great in its way to connect the world together but it can’t control who is going to post what and share what. Hunt’s paper goes on to say that a post from July 2016 where wtoe5news.com stated that Pope Francis was going to endorse Trump’s candidacy. This post was shared more than a million times and yet if those who were sharing would have looked at the WTOE5 “About” page, it would have stated “Most articles on wtoe5news.com are satire or pure fantasy”. (Hunt, Gentzkow 214). This shows that over a million individuals shared this either due to the fact that they believed that it was true or they believed it was funny enough to share but yet a million people is a crazy number. People are spending hours discussing who did what in their political career or what their opinions are on the second amendment and yet the truth is struggling to be found within those discussions just as the Marketplace of Ideas states that it would. You can barely scroll through any social media without some sort of fake news or a lost winded argument coming up during your time spent on it.
But it doesn’t stop there. If you look at all of the fake news coming from people venting their ideas and concerns about how the government can use those to pay attention to groups they may be worried about, it’s not working. It is clear that the U.S. government uses social media to feed us as consumers information and they use it to watch what is being said about them and issues concerning them. Even doing all of this the government can’t keep up with how much is being posted in today’s world. Some times they can't completely censor everything they want to but they sure as hell do a good job of it. Instead they could be using it to prevent tragic events from happening. For example, there was a school shooting I believe within the past 2 years where the kid posted photos of the guns on social media and had posted disturbing messages. The government, or even the social media platform should of seen this coming and could of potentially prevented it. Instead the government uses social media as a resource to sensor the information that the world should know about.
https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf
https://www.statista.com/statistics/433871/daily-social-media-usage-worldwide/
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