protest

logan paul

This is only my opinion, and not the representation of Saintel Daily, LLC.

When it comes to social media, I think the company (or platform) needs to take more accountability from time to time.  This isn’t an excuse for people to post hateful or inappropriate things on these platforms.  They have to take responsibility as well. These platforms were built as a way to connect with the rest of the world and be creative.  Not only that, it gives people a voice, which is extremely important.  No system or platform is ever going to be perfect because it’s people who are using those platforms and we certainly aren’t perfect.  Which is why there needs to be a balance.

These platforms – like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter – need to have some kind of rules in place that really draws a hard line on what is ok.  Hate speech, for example, is one that I think that most of us can agree on is not ok.  Yes, these platforms have rules in place, but we still see this information getting posted.  More recently, there has been a ton of backlash over Logan Paul posting a disturbing suicide video on his channel last month.  Since then, he’s removed the content and apologized.  But there have been a lot of people complaining that it’s not enough.  And maybe it’s not.  Where am I going with all of this?

hate speech

YouTube finally responded to the post, and it’s going to be bad for Logan Paul’s social media career.  YouTube made the following statement on Twitter:

It’s taken us a long time to respond, but we’ve been listening to everything you’ve been saying. We know that the actions of one creator can affect the entire community, so we’ll have more to share soon on steps we’re taking to ensure a video like this is never circulated again.

Is this enough?  More specifically, what could YouTube be coming up with that will prevent these kinds of things from happening in the future?  I’m definitely interested in what this could be – not only for YouTube but for the entire industry.  Think about it.  We have people broadcasting live videos through Facebook of some pretty heinous acts.  And they haven’t been overly successful in stopping those.  Facebook also plans on hiring a ton of people over the next few months in order to prevent this from happening.  But is people power enough in these cases?

Logan Paul

I think, in order for real systemic change to happen, we as a culture have to shift.  This isn’t an easy thing to do. I’ve said this before, but it seems like we are really on the edge of some big changes.  It’s finally 2018, and the fact that we’re still talking about inequality is the most outrageous thing that I’ve ever heard.  I think laws will help with this cultural shift, but I suspect that the big changes are going to come as a result of social media.  Which is a really great thing.  Until people like Logan Paul post inappropriate content.  That said, I am going to hold my applause for YouTube until I hear what they are bringing forward.  I am happy to see that they’ve made this declaration, and now I hope they can pull together some really great ideas on how to manage these kinds of issues.