Argumentative Essay on Should Social Media Platforms Be Allowed To Remove or Block Posts?

This essay will discuss whether Social Media platforms should be allowed to remove or block posts based on the Toulmin argument. The Toulmin argument consists of six parts: claim, grounds, warrant, qualifier, rebuttal, and backing, with the claim linked to the grounds by the warrant, supported on a secondary level by backing, and given context and alternative viewpoints by the qualifier and rebuttal. This essay will make the claim that Social Media platforms should not be allowed to remove or block posts on the grounds of Social Media comprising free contributions protected by the First Amendment rights to free speech, with First Amendment protections ideally surpassing Social Media platform powers. This will be backed by the cases of political censorship of minority rights groups and opposition parties on platforms such as Google and Facebook. This essay will then present a qualifier on the grounds of false information and cyberbullying, and will provide a rebuttal on the basis that Social Media platforms should be allowed to remove or block posts if these posts would be the cause of significant harm on the basis of false information and cyberbullying.

The problem and situation

The removal and blocking of posts on Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram has been a significant source of debate in recent years, with powerful advocates such as the European Union and the United States Congress pushing for greater censorship and regulation to prevent the removal of harmful third-party actors backed by foreign governments and criminal organizations. The technology corporations behind these Social Media platforms have pushed back, contending that these platforms should be founded on the basis of content and platform neutrality and should not be arbiters of truth for the communities and organizations that they host.

Essay thesis

This essay will argue that Social Media platforms such as Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and Google should not be allowed to remove or block posts on the grounds of free speech and freedom of expression, except in cases where there is significant and demonstrable harm on the basis of actions such as false information propagation and cyberbullying.

Claim, grounds and warrant

The claim for this essay is that Social Media platforms such as Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and Google should not be allowed to remove or block posts. The grounds for this claim are supported by the research of Poore (2013) and Shirky (2011), who have convincingly presented evidence based on sociological and demographic studies of communities across the United States that allowing social media platforms to remove and block posts leads to a violation of freedom of speech, and a politicisation of the online and digital space. Such censorship violates First Amendment rights to free speech, which should outweigh the rights of Social Media platforms to block content that was freely contributed and remains the property of their original authors. The warrant is the assumption that First Amendment rights to content and speech produced, including those on Social Media, should outweigh any rights that private actors such as Social Media platforms have in denying content and speech creators their rights of expression on a public platform.

Backing

The above claim, grounds and warrant are supported by the cases of political censorship of minority rights groups and opposition parties on platforms such as Google and Facebook. By forcing Google and Facebook to remove content perceived as hostile and in opposition to the incumbent government, authoritarian regimes in China and Russia have successfully silenced the rights of civic groups, minority rights groups and opposition groups to their right of freedom of expression.

Qualifier, rebuttal

As a qualifier, the above claim should only apply in the case of a lack of harm from actions arising from the preservation of posts on Social Media platforms, and in fact, Social Media platforms should be allowed to remove or block posts if these posts would be the cause of significant harm on the basis of problematic actions such as false information and cyberbullying. An important rebuttal to consider here is presented by Jamieson (2020) and Whittaker & Kowalski (2015), who have presented evidence that the spread of false information by Russian-backed hackers and trolls successfully subverted the 2016 U.S. presidential election by inflaming political tensions in the United States, and that cyberbullying has led to a significant increase in depression and suicide rates amongst teenagers in the United States (Jamieson, 2020 and Whittaker & Kowalski, 2015). On these grounds, Social Media platforms should be allowed to remove such harmful posts in the interest of public safety and public good.

Conclusion

The Toulmin argument structure has allowed for a convincing and thorough interrogation of the premise, and has enabled the decisive conclusion that Social Media platforms such as Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and Google should not be allowed to remove or block posts on the grounds of free speech and freedom of expression, except in cases where there is significant and demonstrable harm on the basis of actions such as false information propagation and cyberbullying.

References

Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. Cyberwar: how Russian hackers and trolls helped elect a president: what we don’t, can’t, and do know. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Kunnan, Antony John. “Test fairness and Toulmin’s argument structure.” Language Testing vol 27.2, 2010, pp. 183-189.

Stout, Mark. “Covert action in the age of social media.” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, vol. 23, 2017, pp. 94-103.

Poore, Michelle. “A call for Uncle Sam to get big brother out of our knickers: Protecting privacy and freedom of speech interests in social media accounts.” NKYLR Journal, vol. 40, 2013, pp. 507.

Shirky, Clay. “The political power of social media: Technology, the public sphere, and political change.” Foreign Affairs, vol, 34, 2011, pp. 28-41.

Whittaker, Elizabeth, and Robin M. Kowalski. “Cyberbullying via social media.” Journal of school violence , vol. 14.1, 2015, pp. 11-29.