The social decline of Instagram

We all agree that hate speech on social media is toxic, abusive, and very dangerous to sensitive youth. But legislating what qualifies as hate speech is a thorny problem, and free-speech advocates have a clear constitutional right to insist that their words are protected. This essay will provide a clear set of rules for the online community to recognize the characteristics of hate speech so it and its practitioners can be lawfully banned from social media.

Unfortunately, we all have different viewpoints on what we consider hate. “A social approval-based theory of online hate suggests that the motivations and gratifications of those who post hate messages are not primarily to antagonize their ostensible victims.” This is where it becomes tricky, trying to distinguish the difference between accidental hate based on viewpoints, and actual hate, like hate speech. 

Hate speech is a different type of hate and sometimes can get tangled up with inadvertent hate, or just an overly sensitive reader.  Hate speech is an “abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice based on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds”. The three definitions are different. Let’s take a look at hate speech on social media. Celebrity Kanye West was banned from Instagram in 2022 for 24hrs when he was using hate speech towards celebrity Trevor Noah. Kanye posted a photo of Trever Noah’s face with the caption being racist lyrics. Another example was Leslie Jones. In July 2016, Jones was receiving ongoing hate on Twitter. They posted unexplainable tweets under her name, made racist comments, and set pornographic images. Why is that?- All because she was set to act in the new Ghostbusters movie at the time. Yes, the British journalist Milo Yiannopoulos, who started the hate towards her on Twitter, was banned permanently from Twitter. This issue is viewpoints and opinions. Just because you don’t agree with something someone says doesn’t mean you have to publicly tear them down on social media, to the point of deleting your account. Inadvertent offense is being offensive without intending to do so. It can occur due to differences, whether it be cultural, personal experiences or just the simple lack of awareness. 

Hate speech is a deeper form of cyberbullying. But cyberbullying is still as intense. 

Cyberbullying is unfortunately a very “popular” thing in the world. “Cyberbullying is the use of technology to harass, threaten, embarrass, or target another person”. As a result of this, the victims of CB face many issues including, bad mental health, embarrassment, and low emotional stress. When doing research on the consequences of cyberbullying, the key word that shows up in a lot of search results is “may”. “The person may get suspended from school”…. “The person may face serious penalties”. It shouldn’t be “may” it should be they will. “They will face serious penalties”… “they will get suspended from school”. Websites like instagram or X, let too many people off the hook and give all these people too many chances. Again, yes they can be reported, but it seems as though all those sites will do is just ban your account, and that person can make another one. Not to mention, who is checking these accounts, specifically who is running that department. Is someone sitting in front of a screen, declining or accepting who they want banned. Maybe, who knows. But, These cyberbullies keep attacking because the chances of penalties are 50/50. “In a quest to make Instagram a kinder, gentler place, the founders had borrowed from Facebook an AI tool known as DeepText, which was designed to understand and interpret the language people were using on the platform. The next year, they trained it to find and block offensive comments, including racial slurs. By mid-2018, they were using it to find bullying in comments, too. A week after Mosseri took over in October, Instagram announced it wouldn’t just use AI to search for bullying in remarks tacked below users’ posts; it would start using machines to spot bullying in photos, meaning that AI would also analyze the posts themselves.”We already know how unreliable AI can be at times, and we also know that It also can be incorrect. So if they are using Ai to ban users who are being offensive/using hate speech, this technology needs to be very specific and can correctly filter out users who are showing hate towards others.

Even though there are many positive effects of social media, there are negative effects as well and this negative effect seems to be a very popular issue around the world. That is why I think that hate should be banned from social media. Freedom of speech is a topic in the social media field. Some people say things that they shouldn’t on social media, but then defend themselves by saying “but I can say that I have freedom of speech”. No you can’t, because of the laws. Social media laws and guidelines are different from each other. These platforms have their own conditions and terms/ guidlines. The “freedom of speech” card can’t be used because of these laws and they can and will ban you. But the issue is, the people keep making different accounts and will most definitely find a way to come back and hate on you and tear you down. Because of these laws, people can’t get into trouble that’s legal oriented, but they can still lose their jobs if their employer sees this hate,  or lose  “brand deals’ ‘ if they’re an influencer. Users can tear other users down, and can lead to deeper issues. 

Let’s take a look at an example. 16 year old teen queer artist dies by suicide after reading hate comments. Her name Prashna was a social media influencer, specifically a makeup artist. In one of the instagram reels she posted, she received a numerous amount of hate. “the artist’s comment section was flooded with over 4,000 homophobic remarks which abetted them to die by suicide. The artist had over 16,500 followers on their Instagram handle,’glam it up with pranshu’.”. This influencer got so much hatespeech from other users that she felt the need to commit death by suicide. Another example is on TikTok in 2023. A little kid, Kevin Gabor struggles with Osteogenesis imperfecta and was attacked on TikTok. He was receiving so much hate online. “”You know I can’t play, I can’t run. I can’t hang out with friends outside. I can’t do a bunch of stuff,” Kevin pleads. “Because I could break something and I have an online community so that I can share and have friends with and you’re trying to take that away from me.” 

Additionally, hate speech and discriminatory language have no place on social media platforms. Implementing stricter repercussions for users who engage in hate speech could help create a safer online environment. This could include suspending accounts, removing offensive content. “It means that a small group of private companies have a lot of power over what speech gets heard and what speech doesn’t,” Nott says. “While that might not violate the First Amendment, it is something that people who value free speech should pay attention to [in the future].” 

As mentioned before,  social media can be a very positive outlet and hold many beneficial features. But, it also holds negative features and with that holds many issues, specifically cyberbullying and hate. Social media sites like instagram, need to hold more of the people who hate accountable. If there are no repercussions involved and nobody faces consequences, these people will continue to keep hating, which is the root to why so many people hate social media. The impact of being mean to someone can be intense. It can lead to feelings of sadness, or anger. It can lead to a low self-confidence, and behavioral responses. The people that are hateful just get to hide behind a screen for example, being mean and negative, but don’t have to deal with the negative effects. That’s the issue with social media. Some random person can sit in the room behind a screen and tear another person down, but does not receive any negative reprcussions. 

Freedom of speech is something that people use to their defense when being offensive to other users.  The term “Freedom of speech”, is used as a lot of peoples defense when being offensive on social media. They make hateful comments about one’s race, sexual orientation, or opinions but then can “win” by saying “I can say what I want… freedom of speech”. Freedom of speech, or the “First Amendment” is “Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction”. Banning users based on what they say raises concern about the freedom of your expression. But in all actuality, freedom of speech doesn’t apply to social media. Sites like instagram have their own set of first amendment rules. This means that Instagram and other social media sites  can moderate the posts without violating their rights.

Determining what is considered harm can be challenging. Hate speech might not be physical, but can be mentally harming and can lead to violence to a specific person or group. For example, take a look at “John Stuarts: Mill Harm example”, he states that “people should be free to act however they wish unless their actions cause harm to somebody else.”. Yes, that’s true but there is a fine line between freedom of speech and hate speech. 

Another rebuttal thrown out is “effective level of banning ”. Yes, Permanently banning hateful users does not necessarily solve the underlying issues, and we should be addressing  the causes of hate speech with lessons, and community, and links + articles. But, It’s hard at times to try to change someone’s mind or opinions+views. Especially if a person has a strong view on their opinion, you’re not changing anything. Putting out an article won’t lead that person to not do it, honestly, it might make them do something more hurtful. With the boldness levels of people on  social media, some people will say whatever they want knowing that they might not ever face that person. So, banning the users will help make the social media environment more clearer. It’s now the person’s issue as to whether they want to make themself more nicer. 

According to Instagrams guidelines, ““We remove content that contains credible threats or hate speech, content that targets private individuals to degrade or shame them, personal information meant to blackmail or harass someone, and repeated unwanted messages. We do generally allow stronger conversation around people who are featured in the news or have a large public audience due to their profession or chosen activities.“ ”. This rule goes against the first amendment , which is beneficial because you shouldn’t be allowed to just say anything because you have the right too. 

Another rebuttal thrown out is “effective level of banning ”. Yes, Permanently banning hateful users does not necessarily solve the underlying issues, and we should be addressing  the causes of hate speech with lessons, and community, and links + articles. But, It’s hard at times to try to change someone’s mind or opinions+views. Especially if a person has a strong view on their opinion, you’re not changing anything. Putting out an article won’t lead that person to not do it, honestly, it might make them do something more hurtful. With the boldness levels of people on  social media, some people will say whatever they want knowing that they might not ever face that person. So, banning the users will help make the social media environment more clearer. It’s now the person’s issue as to whether they want to make themself more nicer. 

An important rebuttal that could be thrown at this argument is “Possibility for Unfair Punishment”. Banning users based on the number of complaints without an investigation into each case could result in unfair punishment. Innocent users might be penalized, while actual users could go unnoticed if they have fewer complaints against them. With this mechanism that would be added, it would be very selective of who is banned. We would not only look at the number of complaints lodged against them, but the content of what they’re posting that was flagged. So unfair punishment wouldn’t happen because of the selective banning process. 

While freedom of speech is a fundamental right, advocating for freedom of speech without considering its potential risks or lack of research, is a big issue. Freedom of speech does not combine with  It’s the reason why so many people use hate speech on social media. There is a very thin difference between freedom of speech and hate speech that people tend to defend their hate with “Freedom of speech, I can say what I want etc.). If Instagram contained  a mechanism for banning users who are mean to other users if the number of complaints lodged against them is credible and sufficient would help the social media community overall. The amount of hate speech and negativity would decrease.

In conclusion, If we find a way to ban hateful users permanently, if the evidence is credible and sufficient, we might finally be able to positively use social media again. Everybody, no matter who, should be able to go on social media and post what makes them happy. The hateful people that tear others down negatively affect so many people and it makes people feel like they can’t share what they want. People tend to have different viewpoints on what being considered “mean” is. But nonetheless, Every online SM platform should be compelled to abide by the same rules of behavior. Doing this would not only improve the people but would improve the app. 

References:

Steinmetz, K. (2019, July 8). Inside Instagram’s ambitious plan to fight bullying. Time. https://time.com/5619999/instagram-mosseri-bullying-artificial-intelligence/ 

Miller, J. (2020, April 21). Can Hate Be Banned From Social Media? New Jersey State Bar Foundation. https://njsbf.org/2020/04/21/can-hate-be-banned-from-social-media/

          Walther, J. B. (2022). Social Media and Online Hate. Current Opinion in Psychology, 45.        https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.12.010

Wetzel, J. (2023, August 29). Disabled child’s desperate plea to stop online trolls brought out the best in Social Media. Upworthy. https://www.upworthy.com/childs-plea-to-trolls-brought-out-social-media-best 

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Asfar, N. A. (2022). A Literature Review of Hate Speech: Forensic Linguistics Study. http://www.ejournal.warmadewa.ac.id. https://doi.org/10.55637/ijfl.3.2.6333.109-114