Introduction
It is undeniable that in this advanced media era, all kinds of information are presented in different social media through different channels. This means that the information that is posted on social media platforms will undoubtedly be both positive and negative. Positive content should be promoted positively, and on the contrary, policies need to be developed to stop the spread of such content. In this article, we will look at who is responsible for stopping the spread of negative content and how.
What is problematic content?
Problematic content includes, to a large extent, child pornography, hate, pornography, defamation, violence, and bullying (Llc, 2020). According to Bermingham (2021), these contents that are considered as negative information in the web are risky when they are posted in the web. In detail, the content may encourage harmful activities and behaviors, and those that harm oneself or others are likely to be promoted indiscriminately and cause irreversible social harm. Therefore, once this content is published and disseminated, the negative impact on society and individuals is incalculable.
Impact on society and culture
Furthermore, there is no doubt that this type of content is potentially harmful to society. When people view problematic content on the internet on an individual basis, this content can lead to people becoming aggressive in the face of things (Children and Screens, 2017). If this negative content is freely available to the general public, the harm to the individual will definitely rise to the social level. At the same time, there is no way to ensure the safety of society in such a situation. In addition to this, there is no doubt that people posting the previously mentioned related negative content on the internet can also affect the culture. This is because this so-called development can largely affect people’s equality, respect for human rights, and people’s values. Simultaneously, this negative content is the most damaging to the development and perception of adolescents (Foresight, 2022). Thus, when information that is detrimental to society is posted on social media platforms, both society and culture receive some degree of harm as a result. This reflects the danger of problematic contents and the need to ban and regulate them.
Examples
Continuing with Foresight (2022), it is known that malicious use of the Internet can reduce social intimacy when online pornography is browsed and viewed on the Internet. This confirms that the presence of negative information on the Internet negatively affects people and society in all aspects. In addition, false information posted on the Internet can largely mislead viewers and spread immeasurably. The spread of such information can lead people to be afraid to trust the information posted on the Internet. The presence of uncivilized content around violence and hatred on the Internet will undoubtedly lead to a society full of hateful thoughts and violent behaviors (Auxier, 2020). In addition, according to Auxier (2020), who interviewed some people about this phenomenon, 16% of the population believes that hateful and violent content is the main reason for the negative impact of social media networks on social development. In addition, almost 30% of the population believes that misinformation and false news make the Internet have a negative impact.
“Researching the spread of fake news and its impact” by CBC News: The National. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5iBW2KGZfQ
About politics
The content posted on the web also has the potential to influence political aspects. According to Auxier (2020), some people believe that social media is inciting partisanship and polarization. People feel that content on social media is predominantly negative, and 53% of Democrats believe that content on social media has a negative impact on the development of the United States. In addition, the influence of problematic content on the political level can be interpreted as people’s aversion to political advertising on social media platforms about politics. People are against the false news that exists in social media platforms. This has gradually led Americans who visit such sites to be disgusted by the political content posted on social media. This also shows that the bad content on the Internet has a great influence on politics.
Who will be in charge?
So far, the harm of bad content posted on social media platforms is obvious to all. Therefore, in order to prevent and stop the spread of such content, it is the responsibility of those in the relevant sectors to stop the posting and proliferation of undesirable content. From a personal point of view, first of all, teenagers are to a large extent the most susceptible. This is because the ideological development of adolescents is not very well developed during their developmental stage, so this group is vulnerable to the influence of undesirable information on the Internet. According to Bermingham (2021), the best person to avoid such content for teenagers is their parents. Parents can do this by installing a parental safety control system in their devices and by having a designated time to use social media platforms. The most important thing is that parents have something to make their teenagers understand the dangers and consequences of bad content. When less and less teenagers are browsing undesirable content on the Internet, problematic contents will be less spread. In addition, it is the responsibility of employers as a whole to establish policies to manage content posted on social media (Foresight, 2022). When this undesirable content is adequately managed, then it is difficult for negative messages to be disseminated in large quantities. According to Roberts (2019), content screening in the Web is managed by site moderators, site administrators, and external parties. In other words, when the staff of these sites find objectionable content, they flag it and review it. In addition, some of the bad content already stored in the database is automatically screened by machines. Then, some content that cannot be identified by the machine still needs human supervision, and these human screeners need to have a certain knowledge and culture to be able to do this job.
How to stop?
The previous paragraph mentioned who is responsible for stopping the spread of objectionable content, and this paragraph will explain how to do so. In order to prevent the spread of undesirable content in social media, employers of each network are required to set up policies to strengthen the management. This will effectively prevent and mitigate the spread of undesirable content. In addition to this, it is important to inform, educate and popularize people about the dangers of undesirable content on the Internet and its harmful consequences. Further, in order to avoid the proliferation of false information and news on the Internet, websites such as Snopes and Politifact exist in order to use a large amount of human power to avoid the proliferation of false information and news on the Web, for example, websites such as Snopes and Politufact exist to review the truthfulness of news content with a great deal of human effort. In addition to human testing, the emergence of machine testing has made the review system even better. They are more rigorous and less subjective than human testing. This means that there are now very sophisticated systems to check the authenticity of content posted on the web (Molina et al., 2021). In addition, another example is Facebook (Langvardt, 2018), where if a user posts hateful or pornographic comments on Facebook, the moderator will first ask the user to delete the comments. If the user persists in posting such undesirable content, their account will face a ban. In addition, to ensure users’ freedom of expression, the platform needs to respect users’ freedom of expression while ensuring that the content is reasonable (Langvardt, 2018). Therefore, the approach to regulating content on social media can be referred to the previously mentioned strategies.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the presence of undesirable content in social media platforms has a huge negative impact on today’s society and culture. In order to ensure the peaceful development of the society and not to mislead individuals’ perceptions, it is very important to strictly regulate the content of social media networks. The relevant authorities have a certain responsibility for the regulation of online content, and extreme and manual auditing plays an important role in the regulation of content.
Reference List
Auxier, B. (2020, October 15). 64% of Americans say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the U.S. today. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/15/64-of-americans-say-social-media-have-a-mostly-negative-effect-on-the-way-things-are-going-in-the-u-s-today/
Bermingham, S. (2021, July 6). Exposure To Inappropriate Content Online. ISPCC. Retrieved from https://www.ispcc.ie/exposure-to-inappropriate-content-online/
Children and Screens. (2017, December 27). Violent Content. Retrieved from https://www.childrenandscreens.com/findings/violent-content/
Foresight, S. (2022, March 7). How the internet can harm us, and what can we do about it? Epthinktank. Retrieved from https://epthinktank.eu/2019/02/18/how-the-internet-can-harm-us-and-what-can-we-do-about-it/
Langvardt, K. (2018). Regulating online content moderation. The Georgetown Law Journal, 106(5), 1353–1388.
Llc, C. L. O. (2020, July 6). Can You Face Criminal Charges for Posting on the Internet? Carey Law Office. Retrieved from https://www.careylawoffice.com/2020/07/06/can-you-face-criminal-charges-for-posting-on-the-internet/
Molina, M. D., Sundar, S. S., Le, T., & Lee, D. (2021). “Fake News” Is Not Simply False Information: A Concept Explication and Taxonomy of Online Content. The American Behavioral Scientist (Beverly Hills), 65(2), 180–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219878224
Roberts, S. T. (2019). Behind the screen : Content moderation in the shadows of social media. Yale University Press. pp. 33-72.