In 2020, according to a report by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that the world’s largest and most popular social media giant, Facebook, contained over 20 million images depicting crime scenes of children being sexually abused and passed around for entertainment. Yet, the left continues to call on Big Tech to censor alternative social media sites like Parler and Gab rather than Facebook.
In January, the alternative social media site, Parler, filed a lawsuit in federal court against Amazon for abruptly dropping the company’s hosting contract amid claims that Parler allowed materials promoting violence to actively flourish on its site. It turned out it wasn’t true. In fact, it was Facebook that actually allowed this activity–and does so still to this day–to flourish.
Meanwhile, children are continuing to be exploited on Facebook’s servers while Facebook enjoys the benefits of Section 230, alleviating them of legal responsibility, as they claim they are not publishers and not responsible for the content posted by others.
Meanwhile, in very publisher-like fashion, they continue to remove and ban conservative speech from their platform in the name of preventing “hate speech.”
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Facebook is not the only platform allowing illegal materials to propagate. Google and TikTok both had numerous complaints of images of underage children being abused.
Of course, some level of moderation on social media is necessary even in a society that values the freedom of speech. Illegal materials should most definitely be removed–especially by court order. And a platform has a right to set community standards that it chooses to enforce on its platform as well which should be non-discriminatory and equally enforced across the board. This does not happen at Facebook who chooses to discriminate against against conservative political and religious speech while allowing progressive speech to propagate virtually uncensored.
While Facebook can have the right to publish as they desire, they should not enjoy the benefits of Section 230 which classifies them as a neutral platform and alleviates them of the legal responsibility of what others publish. It is clear that their motivation for moderation isn’t fair and neutral–it is partisan and biased, discriminatory, and they should be treated like any other publisher in accordance with the law.
