According to the Pew research center 62% of adults in the United States get their news from social media platforms. And, while most major media outlets have presence on social media, much more news outlets that are not legit or even regulated are their most of which spread lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories. The numbers of people who believe and share this news from those sources are staggering and rising every day.
Currently social media platforms are protected under the US law as being a provider (platform) not as a publisher which means they can decide for themselves what content should stay on their own platforms. While the pressure is getting higher and higher for those platforms to moderate the content and many of them are trying hard to make that happen, we hear politicians threatening of suing them or even shutting them down when they moderate their content.
How content moderation affects the spread of misinformation? How these companies will balance content moderation and still profit from content? And how politics plays a huge part in that? All of these questions are in the core of this episode’s topics.
Episode Topics:
- 00:33 Intro and the buzz about our 10th episode for this season and upcoming topics.
https://youtu.be/Me4mkbHkqto?t=0m33s - 05:15 A quick history of social platforms and how they grew up to become news sources.
https://youtu.be/Me4mkbHkqto?t=5m15s - 15:59 The rise of extremes in politics, religious beliefs, nationalism… etc. and how being on social platforms helped them spread and expand.
https://youtu.be/Me4mkbHkqto?t=15m59s - 25:48 Using social platform to spread misinformation to affect politics on ground.
https://youtu.be/Me4mkbHkqto?t=25m48s - 37:25 The effort that, finally, most platforms are putting to moderate the content and fight the spread of misinformation while pressured from politicians are rising when their content or their supporters’ content is being moderated.
https://youtu.be/Me4mkbHkqto?t=37m25s - 28:24 Closing remarks and inspiring stories.
https://youtu.be/Me4mkbHkqto?t=28m24s
Resources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_as_a_news_source
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/563514/social-networks-used-for-news-canada/
- https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2019/04/09/canadians-social-media-news-poll/