Persuasive Essay On Social Media

Have you ever had somebody come into your home uninvited? To go a step further, lets say you were about to take a cookie out of your own cookie jar and did that uninvited person ever tell you to get your hand out of the cookie jar because you need to stick to their diet? Well, I hope this has never happened to you; unfortunately, this is happening to some of our social networking sites and its users. The homeowner of course is the social networking site and its creators while the random person barging in represents many of the governments around the world. The problem is that governments are beginning to infringe upon our privacy’s and our rights by monitoring and regulating what can and cannot be said on these platforms. Shouldn’t that discretion

One of the greatest difficulties we face with such rapid communication is context and culture. What we say here in the United States may not offend us, but it can potentially offend people in other cultures. Hate speech and offensive language is in constant use here in America. Whether you go onto Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. You will find individuals and groups promoting and advocating something that the majority of people find irrational, disgusting, disturbing and hurtful. However, the problem here is that in the United States, we have a different set of morals than let’s say that of Turkey. Here, we can say that the United States is terrible and stupid, yet in Turkey, if someone speaks anything controversial against the name of its country then it must be removed at once. Governments are dictating what can be said; therefore, freedom of speech is not actually an accredited freedom since it is being controlled and censored. The staff lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Hanni Fakhoury said “Twitter makes it easier for people to say things they don’t mean seriously and be broadcast far and wide,” and that “If I say online that I want to kill Obama, its far harder to assess how serious I am that if I’m standing across the street from the White house and I have a gun.” (NYtimes.com, Robbie Brown). What’s the difference between the two and what justifies the government’s intervention in the situation? Twitter is a site where anyone can follow anybody and anyone can post anything. If you were to say to your Dad while you’re fishing that you want an In-N-Out hamburger right now he would say that’s too bad. However, if you were to say that I want a hamburger to the cashier at In-N-Out they would say, “Sure, would you like Fries and a drink with that?” It is all about context and frankly, that’s something that many governments cannot understand