Gatekeepers or Censors? How Tech Manages Online Speech
"Apple, Google and Facebook this week
erased from their services many — but not all — videos, podcasts and
posts from the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his
Infowars site. And Twitter left Mr. Jones’s posts untouched.
The
differing approaches to Mr. Jones exposed how unevenly tech companies
enforce their rules on hate speech and offensive content. There are only
a few cases in which the companies appear to consistently apply their
policies, such as their ban on child pornography and instances in which
the law required them to remove content, like Nazi imagery in Germany.
When
left to make their own decisions, the tech companies often struggle
with their roles as the arbiters of speech and leave false information,
upset users and confusing decisions in their wake. Here is a look at
what the companies, which control the world’s most popular public
forums, allow and ban."
