Hate speech is something that will always be around. People will always be able to speak their mind, because we all have a right to. Freedom of speech gives us all the opportunity to say what we want, when we want, of course with limitations on how harmful it is to someone physically. I have never had an issue with hate speech, it’s easy to turn the other way, and just hear for how it is. But there were 2 recent events that made me think otherwise. Two events lead me to believe that there is a fine line between speaking your mind online, and it actually leading to violence.
The first attack is by a man named Cesar Sayoc who mailed 14 pipe bombs to democrats across the nation. This includes officials like Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and the office of CNN in New York City. Fortunately no one was hurt, but it gained the attention of many people regarding online sharing.
What I found funny is the fact that people who work for Trump actually had to scroll through his Twitter to make sure he didn’t retweet any of Cesar’s tweets because his posts looked “familiar.”
Cesar was a right extremist who expressed himself online consistently. He constantly tweeted anti-Democratic remarks on his Twitter feed that led to him ultimately taking matters into his own hands. The story of Robert Bowers is a little bit different. Robert walked into a synagogue on the morning of October 27 with an AR-15 and three glocks and open fired, killing eleven people and injuring six others. He was yelling “kill all the Jews!” during his arrest and injured 3 cops. What did these two men have in common? They were both very active online posting anti Semitic and discriminatory acts.
Kara Swisher wrote an opinion for The New York Times where she believes that social media is an outlet for people like Cesar and Robert to post freely online until they get the guts to actually hurt someone. Robert Bowers was a regular on a website called Gab (which has just gone offline). This website is a far right site where people are exposed to uncensored and no platformed content. Sayoc was on Twitter with his rants about the country’s democratic leaders. Twitter apologized, but it wasn’t genuine. Kara believes that Twitter and Facebook are no better than Gab, they refuse to remove hate speech because doing so would mean losing money. Will this ever be fixed?
Sadly probably not. The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman is flooding tech with investments, and he has no intention of letting hate speech be taken down. So what is there to do?
Companies are starting to use AI controlled regulators, but they aren’t accurate yet. Germany has strict laws and has hired thousands of workers to regulate, but their system is also imperfect. The best we can do right now, is let our voices be heard online with hashtags like #stopthehate and #hatespeech. The time is now! We want to avoid another occurrence like this, not accept it.