With revolutions ever stirring in farway countries and the citizens of the world crying out for freedom, social media companies now have a greater responsibility than ever.
Sites like Flickr, YouTube and Facebook are in a moral vacuum. For the first time in human history, a select few control the flow of information throughout the world, chosen not by democracies or war but voted into power by the almighty dollar.
In November 2007, YouTube took down a “flagged” video of Egyptian police torturing a citizen. Posted by blogger Wael Abbas, the video was only the beginning in a series of difficult decisions for social media.
Upon further review, Google-owned YouTube reinstated the video.
Another Egyptian blogger, Hossam el-Hamalawy, noticed pictures that he posted were being removed from the popular image-sharing website Flickr.
The photographs, which show headshots of Egypt’s infamous security police, were deleted by the site.
In an e-mail later received by el-Hamalawy, Flickr explained the pictures were taken down because they violated the site’s policy — account holders are allowed to post only videos which they themselves have taken.
He was surprised, unuderstandably so, when the pictures were removed. In the endless sea of pictures on the massive site, content is frequently reposted and shared between groups, rarely by the authors themselves.
All companies have a primary goal — make money. Get every last dollar floating around this rock and do it as quickly as possible.
As a company reaches economic stability and profit, the focus becomes ethical. If you can survive morally, without paying off judges and politicians, destroying small nations and manipulating the stock market through insider trading, why not do so?
In many cases, the moral responsibility is clear. To fire employees for requesting basic working conditions, or denying even the most mundane living conditions to the citizens inhabiting the lands we so quickly burn through, is clearly amoral.
But the decision is not always so easy.
Consider the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Social media as a whole have done their best to remain neutral in many of the world’s conflicts, but when a group calls for uprising in Palestine, what is the moral action? What can best be done to both protect life and empower the oppressed?
In a letter to Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Israel’s minister of diplomacy Yuli Edelstein praised Facebook’s hand in supporting positive movements, solemnly warning about the dangers of groups calling for Palestinian uprising, ones with clearly violent potential.
Demonstrating unparalleled vision and human compassion, Google used its newly-acquired company SayNow to set up phone lines through which anyone in Egypt could call and speak a message. The messages were then tweeted with the hashtag #egypt.
This was in response to the Egyptian government’s floundering attempt to maintain control by shutting down the Internet, effectively cutting off not only connections between protesters but also between innocent, endangered Egyptian citizens and the world.
Google used its services to give voice to those who might have otherwise been snuffed out.
Zuckerberg did not ask for this responsibility. YouTube and Flickr’s management should not have to face such moral dilemmas. They do not deserve to hold the future of countless world citizens in their hands, but they do.
By the power of the dollar they have risen to such powerful thrones on the world stage that they can no longer avoid the decisions.
Social media companies now, possibly more than ever, are responsible for furthering the good of mankind and preserving life.
 
Devin Graham is a 21-year-old
business management senior from Prairieville. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_dgraham.
 
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Contact Devin Graham at
[email protected]