The accounts are pumping out thousands of posts about the Canadian economy and alleged support within Canada for U.S. President Donald Trump’s annexation threat.
There’s always a problem proposing that social media companies be held legally responsible for the content their users create. If they can get sued for anything anyone says in a post, it could become impossible for anyone to run a social media site or even a web forum.
The exact same argument could be made for newspapers, magazines, television, film or books … these businesses are all regulated, yet they are able to still generate a profit under tight controls, social media corporations would be able to do the same.
We need to regulate it because it is all warping the fabric of our society
If all newspapers, books and TV and broadcasting news was all unregulated, what do you think would happen? That exact scenario is playing out over the internet … we are allowing the virtual spread of misinformation, disinformation, non-information and outright lies and we are wondering why our world is falling apart.
That’s not a fair comparison at all. There are more steps to something getting published in a newspaper, magazine, etc. vs showing up on a social media site. The amount of users and content generated on social media does not allow for the same kind of scrutiny, definitely not in a reasonable way.
I agree that it isn’t an equal comparison of content generation … but it is a significant content vehicle. Take a look around and talk to everyone around you, most if not everyone you and I know get all their news and information from some sort of social media. Most people under the age of 30 don’t even read a paper newspaper any more let alone go visit a news website to read an article. They get all their information from some dumb post that shows up in their social media feed … a social media feed careful curated and controlled by a mega-corporation that wants to control the narrative in society. It’s essentially like having someone like Musk or Zuckerberg being the editors of all the information that everyone consumes. There’s something wrong with that.
We would never allow one mega corporation control everyone and all newspapers across Canada … but we find it perfectly acceptable when we call it social media.
There’s always a problem proposing that social media companies be held legally responsible for the content their users create. If they can get sued for anything anyone says in a post, it could become impossible for anyone to run a social media site or even a web forum.
The exact same argument could be made for newspapers, magazines, television, film or books … these businesses are all regulated, yet they are able to still generate a profit under tight controls, social media corporations would be able to do the same.
We need to regulate it because it is all warping the fabric of our society
If all newspapers, books and TV and broadcasting news was all unregulated, what do you think would happen? That exact scenario is playing out over the internet … we are allowing the virtual spread of misinformation, disinformation, non-information and outright lies and we are wondering why our world is falling apart.
That’s not a fair comparison at all. There are more steps to something getting published in a newspaper, magazine, etc. vs showing up on a social media site. The amount of users and content generated on social media does not allow for the same kind of scrutiny, definitely not in a reasonable way.
I agree that it isn’t an equal comparison of content generation … but it is a significant content vehicle. Take a look around and talk to everyone around you, most if not everyone you and I know get all their news and information from some sort of social media. Most people under the age of 30 don’t even read a paper newspaper any more let alone go visit a news website to read an article. They get all their information from some dumb post that shows up in their social media feed … a social media feed careful curated and controlled by a mega-corporation that wants to control the narrative in society. It’s essentially like having someone like Musk or Zuckerberg being the editors of all the information that everyone consumes. There’s something wrong with that.
We would never allow one mega corporation control everyone and all newspapers across Canada … but we find it perfectly acceptable when we call it social media.