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Should Censorship Be Banned From Social Media Platform?

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When your favorite celebrity posts a controversial photo, can they get banned from that social media platform? Or how about when you share your own beliefs on social media, can your content get flagged as inappropriate? The answer to both of these questions is yes, and it is blatant censorship. Censorship by definition is “the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security” (Oxford University Press). Censorship regularly imposes certain beliefs on the masses. The practices of suppressing free speech and hindering public communication is extremely prevalent in American culture and it is even common among other cultures. Tom Head, an author …show more content…

YouTube is very well known for their popular media censorship; recently their strongly disliked policies have changed and been enforced. It has become so unfavorable and faulty that people are losing their main source of revenue that once came from their content on YouTube. Content creator Philip DeFranco has a very popular channel with over three million subscribers. His channel had over forty of his videos flagged in a very brief time period, meaning they became demonetized and his source of revenue was jeopardized. This happened because his videos were deemed as inappropriate because of their sensitive content. “the topics he covers are ‘not advertiser friendly’” (Dua). This sparked controversy all over the YouTube community; a simple and popular channel which contained primarily informative subjects which are also covered by large news media was demonetized because of its factual and informative yet fragile content. These instances scares content creators and forces them to rebrand themselves and their content to become more cordial. The media often uses censorship as a form of persuasion. Media is obsessed with how the public reads into certain things. Sean Redmond observes this concept through the mention of how celebrity and media interacts with the public: “the aim of public relations is ‘the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its publics’”

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