Why Is Social Media Justified

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With regards to social media - and any other form of societal interaction, censorship is a mechanism that acts for and against the public consensus. On one hand, censorship of social media can potentially protect the public. On the other, it can limit an individual's freedom of expression. While the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states that "everyone has the right to freedom of expression" in social media, it notes that the right is "subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "[f]or respect of the rights or protection of others" or "[f]or the protection of national security or of public order, of public health or morals". Following this maxim, censorship of social media is justified so long as the material…show more content…
Governments often censor military information and restrict the details of battles, conflicts, military strategies and so on when they are made public knowledge, be it on the news or the web. This application of censorship is tactically beneficial from a military standpoint and ensures that a nation's defence policy is effective. It would be cataclysmic to make public information that would jeopardise the lives of military personnel or information which would undermine the whole plan of defence. The above scenario is not merely hypothetical. In 2010, Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) found sixteen instances of sensitive military information being leaked on social networking websites by its own employees. While the MoD did not comment on whether the leaks led to operational issues, the very fact that they were leaked presented the potential risk that the disclosure of the information on social media sites posed a threat to military personnel as well as to national security. As such a threat poses a risk to the wellbeing of society, censorship is justifiable as it averts the worst case…show more content…
Censorship is also justifiable should the lack of it result in the degradation of public morals. Parents for example, may employ controls on their child's mobile devices. These controls typically restrict the children's access to inappropriate content on the web (e.g. Pornography) that may jeopardise their development. Online interaction may also be monitored by guardians to protect children from predators; this breed of control in social media is likewise justifiable as it is steeped with the intention to protect - not to harm. In the National Juvenile Online Victimisation study conducted in 2011, it was concluded that between 2000 and 2006, there was a 21% increase in online predators who solicited youth online for sex (from 432). This increase was also reflected by an inflation of online youth victims by some 42% (from 265). These results suggests that social media serves as an increasingly popular hotbed for sexual predation. Thus, censorship - a preventative mechanism against online predation - is justifiable as it protects children from potential harm as well as secures their wholesome

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