I believe the biggest threat to the First Amendment is when the U.S. Government can censor U.S. citizens’ speech. Congress should not be able to pass any laws censoring people’s speech online or in person.
I also believe the U.S government should have no right to censor political speech. Specifically, I don’t believe that political figures currently working for the government should be able to censor criticisms against them.
There have been cases where government officials have censored users of social media platforms that criticize them.
I believe this is a problem because government officials are able to turn off or even delete comments on their social media without any repercussions, resulting in a reduction of transparency between government officials and the people who elected them, and making it seem to the general public that the majority of people in the comments are in favor of them.
I believe it is the right of the American people to know how well a government official is doing in office. I think it is wrong for government officials to create a false reality for voters and essentially lie to them.
Accounts acting on behalf of the government cannot turn off comments or block accounts they do not like. However, government officials can turn off comments on personal accounts because their accounts are not protected under the First Amendment.
At face value, this all makes sense — but what if a government official uses their personal account the same way they would use their political one?
I believe it is unfair to the public if government officials can censor people on their political posts regardless of if it is linked to their government account.
Another way that government officials could censor people is by working with a social media platform and engaging in a process known as shadow banning. I think shadow banning could potentially be used to censor people.
Shadow banning involves using an algorithm to censor people that are not seen by the public. The only way to prove that it has happened is if a social media platform came out and said that they did it.
Shadow banning is an important topic to bring up, as it could be possible for a corrupt government official to work with a social media platform to shadow banned users and the biggest problem with it would be that it would not be easy to prove that it has happened to someone.
In conclusion I believe the government should have no authority to restrict U.S. citizens speech and I think criticism of any government official should be respected.