Hate Speech Research Paper

"How the Government is Protecting Hate Speech
In todayâ€™s day and age, technology is on the rise and is a major component in most peopleâ€™s lives. Itâ€™s a major communication platform for people all around the world, and it allows people to organize, share, and accomplish great things. But like most things, there is a downside; it creates an environment that is, simply put, a breeding ground for hate, discrimination, and racism. Under current federal laws and regulations, people are able to get away with saying pretty much anything on the internet--why? Because there are not any federal laws or regulations; the Constitution presented the first amendment, and that is where the standard of determining the validity of speech rests. But in modern …show more content…
Yet, these kinds of comments and insults are still used on a daily basis. Hateful speech on social media websites and applications is at an all time high, and barely anything is being done to try to stop it. Due to the lack of federal laws or regulations, individual sites are able to institute their own policies, many of which do nothing at all to protect its users. Twitter, for example, has no ban on hate speech--people can say pretty much anything they want, completely unfiltered. And while it is true that other sites do implement loose restrictions on what can and cannot be said, the problem with this is that it is wildly ineffective and does not prevent the use of hateful slurs. Not only because of the limited perception of what is considered â€œhateful speech,â€ but because most things need to first be reported before they can be removed. And letâ€™s face itãƒ¼ if a group of people are all discriminatory against a particular race, and are all encouraging racial slurs and hateful posts, they are not going to report each others …show more content…
Ohio in 1969 and Hess v. Indiana in 1973, speech is protected as long as it is simply alluding to lawless action in the future, is not directed at anyone specifically, and is not thought to create immediate danger. In other words, someone can say â€œI am going to rob a house,â€ but not â€œI am going to find your address to rob your house and attack you.â€ On paper, this seems like a fair system; but the problem with this approach is that it allows people to fly under the radar and remain protected just because of their wording. For example, say someone is wildly homophobic and sees a picture of a man and his boyfriend kissing. He would not be protected for saying something like â€œI am going to find where you live and force you to understand how ungodly this is,â€ but something like â€œSomeone should figure out where this was taken and show these men how disgusting they are,â€ is perfectly within the law. If the federal government were to step in and monitor internet content more closely, and make it very clear that anything resembling hateful or threatening speech would not be protected by the first amendment, the number of people successfully getting away with threats and aggressive language would diminish

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