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Censor Twitter Research Paper

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Should Twitter Censor Tweets? Twitter has been a prominent social media platform since its development in 2006. Recently, censoring posts, or “tweets” has been hotly debated around the world as many celebrities and politicians have been attacked by users. Ghostbusters co-star Leslie Jones became the center of the argument over the summer, as she has been subjected to racist and sexist tweets with the premiere of the movie. Shortly after this situation was brought to light, Twitter began taking down tweets and removing the accounts of the offenders. Another high profile example was New York Times editor Jonathan Weisman being bombarded with anti-Semitic tweets by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in June. Twitter should be allowed to censor …show more content…

Twitter is a private company, meaning they do not have to obey the laws of freedom of speech. As I mentioned above, this right is voided when the speech is lewd, obscene or profane anyway. Users such as Milo Yiannopoulos, who are attacking people such as Leslie Jones with racist and sexist remarks, are clearly not within the parameters of the freedom of speech laws. Moreover, no person should be subjected to harassment on these platforms, and it is Twitter’s duty to censor their users from having to deal with these hateful posts. Jonathan Weisman had his life threatened by neo-Nazis for re-tweeting an anti-Donald Trump article, and he was continually the target of anti-Semitic tweets by a certain white supremacy organization. A 2014 survey found that 40 percent of all internet users are forced to deal with cyber abuse, and women, minorities and the LGBT community are harassed far more often. Further, younger kids should not have to see some of the attacks directed at many of the celebrities they follow. Twitter does not ask their user’s ages in their sign up, meaning it is accessible to users of all ages. There are thousands of racist, sexist and homophobic tweets everyday and Twitter must be able to censor these posts in order to make it a safer space for their younger users. Censoring tweets should be permitted because Twitter does not have to oblige with freedom

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