Second Prize Winner: “A dose of social media problem: What should platforms do to protect its users?” by Joshua Tristeza, Mandurriao National High School
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok provide vast spaces for media users to practice their freedom of speech and expression. These platforms have gone beyond our initial expectations when they first emerged and gained popularity in the recent decades. While they grant us many advantages in communication, entertainment, etc, these social media platforms have flaws that need fixing.
Despite its usefulness, social media is prone to harmful online content. This drawback is always associated with our freedom of expression, among our various individual human rights. Although individual self-regulation is a factor in making social media see less harmful content, the larger burden is still on the platform companies. Yet, how exactly should they handle such content without trampling the rights of media users?
Some social media platforms contain contents that are not sensitive when it comes to the basic rights of media users. A very common example of this are pictures of random people uploaded without their permission on memes and other social media quirks. Although it is for entertainment purposes only, people’s photos, including that of minors, circulate on social media without their permission, thus invading their privacy. Some of these even include obscene imagery and adult humor which may be visible to minors.
In order for such acts to be eliminated, social media platforms should include post classifiers and facial recognition scanners that may notify people that their picture might be included on a post. This way, they could report accounts that use their photos without their consent. In such a way, post filtering and fact-checking would also be easier as well as looking for the content you want to have on your feed. It would be helpful to parents in guiding what their children, especially minors, see in their feeds.
Although individual self-regulation is a factor in seeing less harmful content on social media, the larger burden is still on the platform companies.
Moreover, platforms should be responsible in taking down posts and stories that violate their community standards. Recently, I observe a lot of online posts (especially on Facebook) that contain nudity, violence, hate speech, and discrimination. These obviously violate community standards, but for some reasons these videos remain for 24 hours without being taken down. Platforms must be cautious of these bugs in their system and might as well include automatic detectors and more evident reporting buttons.
Moreover, hate speech and discrimination should also be taken down as immediately as possible. With media users being immensely vulnerable to such acts, platforms should have hate speech detectors on their system with various languages registered to be notified of those posts and to take action faster. If news stories include graphic images, then a warning would be appropriate for users. Post classification system could also help in these circumstances.
Despite the immense responsibilities of social media in ensuring basic human rights in the virtual world, governments, too, have the duty to empower its constituents to access these platforms without hindrances. They could create laws to protect the public and forge partnerships with social media for effective multi-stakeholder solutions.
Platforms should be eagle-eyed most importantly during the election and campaign periods. Considering the circumstances that we’ve experienced in the past elections on both local and national levels. Fake news and troll farms are very prevalent. Platforms should employ more fact-checkers and not just rely on third-party independent fact-checkers to counter these problems. In addition, rules and community guidelines must be strictly implemented. There should be no special treatment, be it a politician, a public figure, celebrity, etc. High-profile users who break the rules of certain platforms but were given exemptions due to being newsworthy must be neutralized. If such exemptions exist for high-profile users, then verified local news outlets must also be exempted by the same rules due to them being likewise newsworthy.
Despite the immense responsibilities of social media in ensuring basic human rights in the virtual world, governments, too, have the duty to empower its constituents to access these platforms without hindrances. They could create laws to protect the public and forge partnerships with social media for effective multi-stakeholder solutions.
With the continuous upgrades of social media and the skyrocketing numbers of new users, problems will continue to arise in the digital world. Nevertheless, platforms must take responsibility of the digital environment they have created and ensure a safe space for human rights to prevail.
