I’m sure many of you had attended the women’s march in January, and might of posted

your experience or heated thoughts on social media. Many of you have since posted political

content online, freely expressing your beliefs and sentiments. Now imagine that our current

Administration decided that your posts were inappropriate, and ‘could legally remove said posts

or even your account, and silence your political speech. This is an abusive and tyrannical power

that the government should never possess. Government interference with political content on

social media is not only detrimental to our American values, but is unconstitutional, ineffective,

and unnecessary. Allowing the government to regulate lawful political material on public forum

platforms is to allow the government to hold immense control over our constitutional rights to

freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We risk the giving the government excessive

influence over political material, enabling them to pick and choose political content in their favor.

Social Media is a public forum in which one can express their beliefs and opinions. The

overwhelming majority of political material on social media does not pose a national security

threat, and is therefore protected by supreme law. The McCain Feingold act also protects

citizens from fines and incarceration as result of political speech. In cases where non-American

citizens engage in political speech, this protection still applies, unless it is an extreme case of

international interference, as seen with Russia’s involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election.

In international cases, there already is electoral law that prohibits foreign nationals and foreign

corporations from making contributions or spending money to influence a federal, state, or local

election in the U.S. The solution is not to spend taxpayers’ dollars and risk imposing on one’s

right to free speech, but instead to require social media companies, like Twitter and Facebook,

to be more transparent about their advertisements. The failure to detect the Russian

Interference was the failure of our government. We cannot overlook the advantages to social

media in informing and engaging the public with politics because of cases like this. Social Media
serves as a linkage institution and an accessible way for people to share information and

express themselves. There already are regulations set by social media companies on the

material people can or cannot post, and these sites have the power to take down material that

violates these regulations, all without the interference of the government. If one feels that certain

content causes emotional distress, they have the right to sue, and if a post or advertisement

violates national security, it can be dealt with legally. If our nation’s values of freedom of

expression and diversity of beliefs resonates with you at all, you should see how allowing the

government to interfere with political content on social media is a violation of the very principles

our country was founded upon. We conclude that the best way to address any international or

domestic interference issues is through requiring the privately owned social media companies to

be transparent about their paid advertisements, and not to allow the government to have a

strong grip over our all of our social media content. This transparency will be achieved by

creating legislation that requires social media companies to clearly categorize their ads in a way

that would distinguish a political ad from other advertisements, and also allows any user to see

where this advertisement came from and who paid for it. To enforce this legislation, all social

media companies that do not comply with these standards will face a heavy fine. As it is, all

necessary laws are in place to promote a safe and constitutional use of social media, and we

will not stand for these fundamental rights to be infringed upon.

Hate Speech add on: A unanimous supreme court ruling decided that hate speech is protected

under the first amendment and the constitution cannot simply be uprooted because of mean

comments made online.