Nima Pishva
Cs2008 assignment 3
1.
I watched the video!
2.
a)
Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of press, right to knowledge
However as twitter is a private company its hard to say if it would violate those rights because
they can control their own platform.
b)
Freedom of liberty because twitter is a private company, as they did with banning donalt trump
for example
c)
The internet turns into a sort of witch-hunt when you voice an opinion that people don’t agree
with or think is controversial. A lot of people are quick to jump to conclusions when they
disagree with something rather than looking at context, reasoning and meaning behind things
that are said. By deciding what is okay to say and what isn’t you are effectively silencing the
opposing opinion of others and scaring them into expressing their opinion publicly without fear
of repercussion. However someone who has an opinion that is widely accepted by let’s say
people on twitter can use their right to freedom of speech and opinion without hesitating and
that’s the way it should be, no one should be scared to express how they feel, of course there
are exceptions if something is blatantly wrong such as saying “It’s the woman’s fault if she gets
raped” or “Indian people are the root of all evil” but opinions on things like gun control have no
right or wrong side, they are just opinions.
d)
I don’t think a utilitarian approach would even make sense here as twitter is accessible in pretty
much every country in the world, and even given that the utility can be measured in most cases
the smaller portion who won’t get their so the majority can benefit won’t be that small. Also as
we are talking mostly about opinions and ideology it would likely favour the side that a lot of
people disagree with because out of a point of utilitarianism someone losing their job and
damaging their mental health would be more substantial than people being upset at a
comment on the internet.
3.
a) An algorithm won’t be able to tell if something is for example racist or would offend people
or would be inappropriate to post. You can give an algorithm a blacklist of words or sentences it
looks through for each post and if the post contain any it won’t be uploaded. But again, there
would be no way for an algorithm to tell the message a post is trying to convey because a user
could be using sarcasm or in Justines case someone could be telling a joke, or someone could
be just posting information about some topic that is on the blacklist because it is controversial,
and it won’t be able to upload. Those are the problems with using an algorithm.
b) Humans are very bias, so hiring someone to check posts before they are posted wont be fair
to everyone as the person checking them will always favour posts that he agrees with therefore
silencing a whole other group or even groups of people with different beliefs, this happens in
countries like North Korea or even a little bit in my country Iran. There’s been cases where
Iranian teenagers have been sentenced to prison or even sentenced to being lashed because
they have posted things on twitter and other social media sites where the government has
deemed it to be unfit, one example of these instances was a young adult girl who posted videos
of her on Instagram dancing, and she got arrested. This example is the government controlling
the posts and not an employee in a private business-like twitter but it would lead to twitter
becoming some sort of narrow minded and extremely bias source of information and it would
not work. In regard to justines case her post could have been restricted or not depending on
the person who reviewed it. This would also be extremely time consuming as millions of people
post on twitter every day,
c) This poses the difficulty of people using their bias instead of understanding the actual
meaning of people’s posts, and people could abuse this system to report peoples post that they
have personal vendettas with. In justines case all her future posts could be taken down even if
she tries to explain herself or apologize to the people she offended.
4.
In my opinion twitter should let people post whatever they want but users will be able to report
posts but for things that would violate the law such as child pornography or obvious instances
of racism but other than that everybody has the right to their own opinion even though a lot of
people face social shame from many for certain opinions its still important to be able to express
your opinion, therefore I think twitter shouldn’t restrict any content other than the previously
mentioned as it violates the right to free speech in my opinion. I understand this wont work
particularly because twitter is a private company and can choose what they want and what they
don’t on their own platform but its still my opinion.