Month: November 2019

Writing 07: Censorship

Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right. From the US Constitution to other developed nations, freedom of speech utilized for news, advertisements, music, and such. It prevents the government from detaining civilians for any unwanted messages and enables the people to speak out. With the help of the internet, people now have greater access to the public and can get a wider audience on a global scale. It plays a main role in gathering people such as for the Hong Kong protest. Governments should not have the right to force censorships on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as they can misuse this for their own agenda. However, this does not mean these companies should just allow people to post whatever they want. This would hurt their platform anyways as people would start to assume that the social media is not an accurate method of getting news and information. Governments should encourage and push for these companies to start enforcing better flagging/reporting system. Most sites implement this feature already; unfortunately, it is on a basic level. It only enforces disturbing images or adult content. If anything, some content still manages to bypass these filters. It does not do much for fake news or hate crime. Because the sites should not censor any user’s posts or content, they should allow everything to be posted (except for legal concerns such as copyrighted material or photo/video taken without consent), but have an alert system that notifies any viewers that the information is wrong. For example, if someone wants to post on Facebook, “Notre Dame is an all male school,” it would still be posted. But it would have a badge in the corner or somewhere to mark it as invalid information. Of course, things would get harder to filter out especially with meticulous details. However, it would be nice to see the US government implement it for the presidential election which brought an immense amount of fake news. With growing research in AI, it could, one day, be a useful tool. For posts such as “Hillary Clinton killed 100 people,” it would mark it as not true. Social medias should also warn users for any links to news medias that are notorious for false information or bot generated pages. Not only would it help the users and make the world a better place, but the companies themselves will get a better image from it too, and more people will trust them. I am all for freedom of speech, but there shouldn’t be a forceful push for regulation. Rather, the government should provide incentives or tax cuts for companies that bring benefits to society. If not, it would be seen as censorship which I am sure the media would make a bigger deal out of. Just like driving a car and owning guns, everything is better and safer with some sort of rules. The government is not going to get rid of the rights, but making sure the world is a better place.

Writing 06: Corporate Conscience

Corporations as a whole should be responsible and ethical for their behavior and purpose. Their business model shouldn’t prey on other people but rather help them in return for money. At the same time, corporations shouldn’t be required to follow certain ethical standards as long as they don’t hurt other people, even indirectly. I think that corporations should have the freedom to whatever they want as long as they don’t take advantage of other people and don’t go against their promised purpose and image. As much as we want everyone to be nice and caring for each other, everyone is just try to get food on their table, even if it means to do something shady. An example would be like a shady data company that takes people’s information. I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up committing crime or selling personal information to other companies because that is what they are. However, if Chick-fil-A did that, then I would be against it, since their image is to be righteous and moral. Companies should stick to their image and not take advantage of any good image they propose to the public. If a company is going to be unethical, they shouldn’t make advertisements making it seem like they are good. Companies are also going to end up getting bigger, such as Google and Facebook. At their size, they bring in lots of profit and can afford expensive lawyers. There is nothing wrong with affording expensive lawyers, but companies shouldn’t start trying to go through loop holes to cut through corners. Companies shouldn’t also try to lobby for laws that will benefit them. From the gas industry to the tech industry, lobbying plays a big role in Congress to get certain laws passed. Governments should stand up to big industries rather than falling for money. Of course, all of this wouldn’t happen if tech companies weren’t so big. I personally have nothing against big companies, especially if they were started by hardworking people with great passion. However, big companies shouldn’t start ‘bullying’ smaller ones and try to dominate the market. Every companies, small or big, should have equal opportunities. All of this, again, goes back to the government. Government should, in fact, pass laws that will regulate such corporate action. Yes, some laws have been passed for monopoly, but that was in the mid 20th century. We are in a new generation with new laws and new technology. Governments should pass laws to regulate bigger tech companies to prevent them from one, getting bigger, and two, bullying smaller companies. There are so many cases when if a small company doesn’t want to be bought out, the bigger company just try to copy their technology at which point the small company dies out while the bigger company has a replica of their idea. Governments should have better intellectual property regulation to fend for small companies because at the end of the day, it is going to be small businesses that are going to follow laws better and help the economy better, not big corporations.