DIGITAL LIFE

Majority of Americans don't trust social media decisions about content, says survey

Most Americans do not trust social media companies to make the right decisions about what should be allowed on their platforms and trust the government even less about these choices, according to a survey released Tuesday by Gallup and by the Knight Foundation.
The debate over moderation of online content, already highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic and before the United States presidential elections, has intensified in recent weeks, with Twitter and Facebook disagreeing about how they deal with controversial publications by the US president. American, Donald Trump.
The survey found that nearly two-thirds of Americans are in favor of letting people express their opinions on social media, including offensive opinions.
However, 85% of respondents said they are in favor of removing health information that is intentionally false or misleading and 81% support the removal of platforms from intentionally lying allegations about elections or other political issues.
Those surveyed were more critical of companies that do less in moderating harmful content, with 71% of Democrats and 54% of independents saying companies are not tough enough, while Republicans were more divided.
Eight out of 10 respondents said they did not trust the tech giants to make the right content decisions. But the majority said they prefer companies to set these rules and not the government, although a small majority of Democrats are in favor of the government by setting content limits or guidelines.
Respondents tended to prefer the idea of ​​having independent content supervision boards to determine the rules, with 81% saying that creating these boards is a good idea. Facebook is in the process of creating a similar body that will review cases of harmful content posted on the platform and be able to make policy recommendations for the company.

by Elizabeth Culliford