Question

Is Facebook culpable, complicit or capable for societal harms perpetrated on its platform (e.g. election meddling, live-streaming of violence)?

What is the appropriate response of social media platforms: refraining, remedying, regulating?

Answer 1

Being provider of a platform for the people to express their views on a global and highly visible medium of interaction with fellow members, Facebook needs to have measures to identify and correct the objectionable content at the earliest, identify the users who spread hate by posting and remove them before they cause more harm. If it fails to do so, it is complicit in the harm as it is abating such behaviour, though unintentionally and inadvertently.

The right response is to regulate the contents because there is no way to identify such elements before they post objectionable content,but the efficiency lies in employing a mechanism that identifies it as early as possible and removes it. Refraining is not possible, as it will defeat the purpose of social media and someone can not be denied the access and use rights Just on suspicion. Remedying is also not good, as it takes few minutes for the damages to be done and in most cases it will be too late.