The inmense variety of content in the digital wolrd has lead some people to question weather it’s a safe space for everyone. Nowadays, no one is safe from hate speech, cyberbullyng or even fake news in internet, especially kids. For this reason, there might be some that believe the government should interfeer through the censorship of harmful content published every day. In this essay we will talk about why this idea may work to make the internet a safer space, but also what are it’s flaws and how can this issues be adressed.
Governments should have a responsability in making the internet a safe place for everyone: kids, young people, women, the elderly and minorities, amongh others. This, through controling the content that is published in the online world, for example, by government agents implementing a monitoring system that eliminates any content that could indanger the wellbeeing of the users, especially kids and young people, that are more exposed given their social media time-use. However, this mechanism could be difficult to implemet because of the enormous amount of information that is published in a daily basis. Also, this censorship could be seen, or even used if not well managed, as a controlling tactique on the civilians.
To adress this issues, rather than the government controling directly the content, congressman could create laws that punish the users and profiles that publish harmfull content. To implement this laws, however, social media and website owners play a crucial rol by implementing, for example, algorythms that are capable of processing this giant amount of information to identify the nocive content, review it and delete it. Thus, by working together and with an incentive system, both government and social media and website owners can make the internet a safer space for the online community.
In conclussion, eventhoug the goverment controling the content available in the internet can be a complex and polemic idea, it’s also a rapid and effective path to prevent people from keep getting harmed in digital spaces. Nonetheless, there are other measures that can be implementd, specifically by congressman along with social media and website owners, in the long-term and that can be more effective in keeping people safe and, at the same time, eliminating the possible impacts that censorship can potentially have in free speech at digital spaces.