What We Don’t See Online Is Warping Our View of the World
The way social media companies have responded to recent conflicts such as the war in Ukraine sharply illustrates inequities in content policy enforcement.
Recent events around the world—from the wars in Yemen and Ukraine to protests in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the all-too-regular mass shootings in the U.S.—have raised fresh questions about how social media platforms deal with violence and extremism on their platforms. Many of these concern not the content that’s allowed to spread and go viral, but rather images that get removed before they ever have the chance to do so.
“What does documentation of security force violence against protestors in Sudan, documentation of human rights violations by Russian troops in Ukraine, and disturbing images by pro–reproductive right demonstrators have in common?” asked Dia Kayyali, who has worked to protect human rights documentation and important political content on social media platforms. “All this content is incredibly important, newsworthy and potentially could even serve as evidence” in later criminal prosecutions, they said. “But it is also susceptible to being removed under poorly written or poorly enforced graphic violence content policies on social media.”
