TECHNOLOGY Tom Meehan, CFI Tiko Aramyan / ShutterStock.com
Meehan is retail technology editor for LPM as well as chief strategy officer and chief information security officer for CONTROLTEK. Previously, Meehan was director of technology and investigations with Bloomingdale’s, where he was responsible for physical security, internal investigations, and systems and data analytics. He currently serves as the chair of the Loss Prevention Research Council’s (LPRC) innovations working group. Meehan recently published is first book titled Evolution of Retail Asset Protection: Protecting Your Profit in a Digital Age. He can be reached at TomM@LPportal.com.
Misinformation, Censorship, and Big Tech The Risk It Poses for All of Us
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When influential tech companies like Twitter and Facebook turn to outright censorship, it can become a slippery slope. Instead, I believe that social media companies should follow Twitter’s example of labeling misleading information and warning users who click on or share this content.
he breach of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and its aftermath have highlighted just how much influence social media and technology companies like Twitter and Facebook have on real-world events. On January 8, Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump from its platform, and many other tech companies including Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube, followed with indefinite suspensions. To be clear, this article is not about politics or the right versus the left, although I do use some political events as examples. For the record, I do not condone the statements made by Trump, and I also oppose violence. What I want to focus on is the role that social media and Big Tech play in our access to information. To justify deplatforming Trump, many of these companies have cited the risk of social media causing violence in real life. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey specifically mentioned the risk of “offline harm as a result of online speech” in his statement about banning Trump’s Twitter account. While I do not agree with the actions of the people who breached the Capitol or the president’s statements about what happened, I am still left
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with the question of whether these statements could have been handled in a different way.
The Consequences of Social Media Bans Although the media tends to frame social media censorship as a highly political issue, it extends far beyond that. In my opinion, the issue is more about social media and other Big Tech companies deciding what people can and cannot see. Because the First Amendment protects freedom of expression from being limited by government bodies, that leaves a lot of room for private companies like Twitter and Facebook to decide who gets to use their platforms. The recent wave of social media bans is not limited to deplatforming major public figures like Trump. Parler, a social media platform focused on free speech that became popular with conservative users, was recently banned from the App Store and Google Play. Apple, Google, and Amazon defended their decision by explaining that user posts that incite violence violate their policies. This takes the issue of “online speech wars” further than a
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conflict between social media platforms and their users. By preventing people from downloading Parler at all, Apple, Google, and Amazon have effectively shut down a platform because they do not approve of Parler’s laissez-faire approach to free speech. While I do not condone the content on Parler that encourages people to take violent action, I am alarmed by how just three companies were able to take such drastic action against individuals’ freedom of expression. Imagine if a Big Tech company decided to pull your internal data as a retailer from their server? Or what if Facebook removed your paid advertisement campaigns because they did not agree with your message? While it seems like social media censorship only targets conservatives, there is a real risk for liberals as well. With the federal departments bringing antitrust suits against major tech corporations like Google and Facebook in recent years, Biden might support these suits as the president. But what if these same tech companies shut down Biden for speaking against them? While I am not suggesting this would
