Should Social Media Platforms Be Held Legally Responsible for Misinformation Spread on Their Networks?

The various social media platforms are hence the actors in Modern’s contemporary public sphere and with such an influence comes the urgency of the responsibility.:

Misinformation Epidemic: The inherent algorithms of social media set up the promotion of the contents by the interaction, by the retweet, like and share options and all of these contributes to the spread of fake news.

Profit Over Truth: The above statement is just to show that since users tend to spend more of their time on some particular sites after being misinformed, the platforms get to gain by taking monetary profits out of chaos; they get to make their money by targeting the best advertisements.

Threat to Democracy: Accuracy for truth therefore is the bane of confidence, and the threat is to the very principle of democracy.

Real-World Consequences: The negative impact that has been associated with the use of social media includes; Since most information shared is fake, the lives of people is endangered through fake health information.

Need for Accountability: This needs to spread a sort of legal responsibility on to the platform for the dispersal such content as a means of encouraging preventive action.

Refer: In brief it can be argued that there is a need to sanction the owners of the social media platforms for such misinformation as such duties and responsibility if so important for the general protection of the integrity of the social media as well as democratic and social fabric of any society.

With billions of people visiting us every day - whether they’re looking to be informed, to catch up on the latest news, or to learn more about the topics they care about, we have a responsibility to connect people to high-quality content. So the most important thing we can do is increase the good and decrease the bad. That’s why we address misinformation on our platform based on our “4 Rs" principles: we remove content that violates our policies, reduce recommendations of borderline content, raise up authoritative sources for news and information, and reward trusted creators. "

So YouTube takes the role in removing information users are responsible for and have created .

More from YouTube:

As detailed in our Community Guidelines, YouTube does not allow misleading or deceptive content that poses a serious risk of egregious harm. When it comes to misinformation, we need a clear set of facts to base our policies on. For example, for COVID-19 medical misinformation policies, we rely on expert consensus from both international health organizations and local health authorities.

Our policies are developed in partnership with a wide range of external experts as well as YouTube Creators. We enforce our policies consistently using a combination of content reviewers and machine learning to remove content that violates our policies as quickly as possible."

"Other Legal Terms

This section includes our service commitment to you. It also explains that there are some things we will not be responsible for."

If you have a YouTube channel, you may be able to upload Content to the Service. You may use your Content to promote your business or artistic enterprise. If you choose to upload Content, you must not submit to the Service any Content that does not comply with this Agreement (including the YouTube Community Guidelines) or the law. For example, the Content you submit must not include third-party intellectual property (such as copyrighted material) unless you have permission from that party or are otherwise legally entitled to do so. You are legally responsible for the Content you submit to the Service. "

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This section applies to users who provide Content to the Service. It defines the scope of the permissions that you grant by uploading your Content, and includes your agreement not to upload anything that infringes on anyone else’s rights. "

YouTube backs up their agreement on this method.