White House Develops Tool to Report Censorship on Social Media

White House Develops Tool to Combat Censorship

The White House recently developed a new tool that people can use if they feel as if they’ve been gagged or censored on social media websites like Twitter and Instagram.

The website explains that too many Americans have had their accounts taken away, or have been falsely reported for murky violations.

It also says that whatever side you’re on, if you see something on Facebook or Twitter that you suspect is biased against you, then you need to share this with the President.

Twitter talked about the new tool and explained that they enforce their own regulations for everyone on the popular social media platform, regardless of their political standing.

They continued by saying that they are always working to improve things for users, and hope to be honest about everything that they’re doing in the future.

Hearings Held for Possible Censorship

Most recently, the right has focused on social media networks, with the claim that conservatives are being censored unnecessarily. House Energy and Commerce and Senate Judiciary have even conducted hearings on problems like this, where lawmakers talked to people from Twitter and Facebook.

Both Senator Ted Cruz and online personalities Diamond and Silk have brought light to this issue, with Ted Cruz holding a hearing with executives of both social media platforms to talk about the alleged bias.

Only two democrats were in attendance. The executives were asked why particular posts that were uploaded by conservative companies had been taken down.

Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, met with the President last month, in a meeting that was supposed to be about what the platform was doing to try and abate the opioid epidemic. However, it was later said that Trump spent a lot of that time talking about how Twitter posts were causing him to lose followers.

Donald Trump Jr. has also been vocal about his concerns around right-wing activists losing their voice on social media. When Facebook announced that it would be banning Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist, for his far-right activism, Trump Jr. tweeted about the issue, saying that conservatives are being silenced by the monopoly.

Requirements of Filing a Complaint

Typeform hosts the brand-new tool, which asks its users to provide links and screenshots of the content that is considered offensive. They can then explain through a text form the type of actions that had been aimed at them as a result. The user is also asked to choose which platform it happened on, whether it was YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

The tool also asks users to understand that the form is for information gathering only, promising that it won’t share any of the information it collects. Among the information that users are asked to provide is their name, contact information, and basic demographic.

Lastly, you’re asked to sign a user agreement, and while it won’t be shared in a way that violates your privacy, it can be published. Currently, the platform is only dealing with social media websites like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.

However, if users want to manually type in another platform, they can. As all social media platforms have become more popular, they have been met with backlash from both the left and the right.

The left has accused platforms of not moving quickly enough to block things like hate speech and online bullying. The companies behind platforms like this have responded by trying to stay on top of unwanted content through moderators.

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