Table of Contents
Summary 1
“Big Tech Made The Social Media Mess It Has To Fix It,” published on CNN online in October 29, 2018 by author David Goldman is intended for social media heads who are over these platforms argues that social media sites has become platforms to display hate speech, he argues how tech companies should be willing to spend the money it requires to fix the issue. Goldman mentions that they do not want to pay for the cost of policing these actions since the cost is extremely high, and they are not wanting to lose money or active users to fix the issue.
Goldman says that some social media sites explained how there are already some rules placed to fix this issue. Goldman also says that it is becoming quite easy for people to throw hate speech to “alienated” people. Goldman say this hate has quickly changed into violence, he notes that majority of the disasters that happened in the United States like the mass shootings, most of them all had warning signs that were put onto social. He believes the people who are supposed to have been policing these posts could potentially stop anything from happening. Goldman explains that many of these company worry more about the cost of expanding the company than spending money to oversee content that is out on their platforms. He argues forming ways to limit the hate and radical speeches on social media could change it and become far better than it is today.
Summary 2
In “The Slippery Slope of Regulating Social Media,” published on The New York Times online in September 11, 2018, Peter Suderman is calling to action social media users, telling them that social media should not be used as a “collective good” and should be policed by these social media users themselves. Although people have the right to speak freely, he says that it is users who are creating this problem. Suderman explains how social media/internet was created for people to have the opportunity to speak to one another, but can ultimately change what is already posted.
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Because social media is so big and used daily, Suderman also expresses how the policing of speech is needed but people together as a community have to change it too. He recalls how social media is customized by whatever a person shares or posts. He includes that there is no way to get away from speech on social media because it consumes a lot of people’s time. He tells the readers that it is a “tool” that should be used with the consideration of how others would view their opinion. He states how people should not “abuse” their use and let it consume how they think and he also includes that according to social media heads, it is not a question of if social media should be regulated, but about how it should be handled. Many users and the government are all calling for more regulation on these platforms.
Response
In the current generation, social media has become something very big. Almost everyone uses it and quite frankly, I find myself using it very often. Even though there are things on people’s timelines that they do not like seeing, they can not seem to put their phones down. I agree with Peter Suderman in “The Slippery Slope of Regulating Social Media” stating that there is a problem with the amount of hate speech that is put onto social media and that it is not a “collective good”, and we should be against regulation and should be attempting to change the way we use it. Although it appears that there are already some rules and regulations pertaining to hate speech on social media, I agree that it is actually true that people should change the way they use social media and be more careful with what they say on social media because not all things are meant to be seen/heard by others.
I agree with Sunderman’s argument because we are the ones who made social media what it is today and we should be the ones to change how social media is being used. These social media platforms have become so popular that there are billions of people using them on a day to day basis and this is where Sunderman states that, “all of us, as citizens and individuals and residents of the online world have a responsibility to manage our own social media consumption, to resist letting it take over their own thoughts, our lives, our culture, and our politics” (Sunderman). Everything that is put on social media can not be taken to the heart, and we have to know that people will put what they believe on social media despite others, and we have to stand firm on what we ourselves believe.
David Goldman, the author of “Big Tech Made The Social Media Mess It Has To Fix It,” states how “social media has given people a platform to spew hate speech and radical beliefs to other disaffected people, amplifying what are otherwise fringe opinions” (Goldman) and I agree because these platforms are not actually trying hard enough to stop the problem or minimize it. After reading this article, I have come to the conclusion that we can not depend on the heads of these social media sites to police the content that is put onto their sites because of the right to free speech. We are the ones who are using these platforms, and we have to consider the audience we are posting for.
Sunderman also makes the point that according to social media heads, they know that there is a problem with hate speech on their platforms and are accepting these views, but know that it is too dangerous.. Sunderman stated that they explained how, “We [social media heads] don’t think it’s a question of whether regulation, we think it’s a question of the right regulation” (Sunderman). Even if these heads of social media did pay to have these posts regulated, there would still be problems with the process behind the regulations. Because every human being an opinion, if they do put forth the effort to regulate and police these comments being made, they risk the people behind the keyboard only regulating the posts they believe to them to be out of hand.
The people behind the regulating may agree with one person and their comment may be a hate post, but as soon as someone else says something to contradict that comment they may feel offended and remove it and this causes problems with the regulating system. This goes into what Goldman says about how, “Now tech leaders have a responsibility to rein in the creation that have grown too unwieldy for them to control” (Goldman), and because there is so much hate speech that it is becoming too much for them to regulate, this ties into Sunderman’s theory for people as a community to control it themselves. Social media heads can come up with more ways to regulate and try to control what is being put up to make sure that everything that is said is not harming and putting others in danger.
My view on this topic has evolved by seeing that we have to get together as a community to change the way we use social media. At first, I really did not think about the issue of hate speech that is displayed on social media, and after reading these articles, I was able to see that there are examples of hate on my timelines, and I never noticed it because I know what I believe in and what I stand for. I learned that this issue has had a bigger impact than we realize. This issue has been displayed before the mass shootings that took place over our country because it was not taken as serious as it should have been.
Works Cited
- Goldman, Analysis by David. “Big Tech Made the Social Media Mess. It Has to Fix It.” CNN, Cable News Network, 29 Oct. 2018,
- Suderman, Peter. “The Slippery Slope of Regulating Social Media.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Sept. 2018,
