Social media giants scramble to control Charlie Kirk assassination videos after Utah shooting

Fox Business cited CEI’s expert on content moderation

Jessica Melugin, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Technology and Innovation, told FOX Business that social media companies are faced with a moderation challenge because users can directly upload the content. 

“Content moderation at scale, and the scale we’re talking about is immense, with big platforms can be very difficult. It’s not going to be perfect,” she explained. 

“With the gravity of this event, I think that they’re probably putting a lot of resources into pulling this stuff down, labeling it, putting the blur in, making warnings,” Melugin said. “They really don’t have any incentive to horrify people right off their platform.” 

“It’s one thing to have a little click-bait, be a little sensational – but that’s not what we’re talking about here. This is like watching someone be murdered in real time. I hope and pray the vast majority of America doesn’t have much of an appetite for that,” she added.

Melugin noted that Charlie Kirk had a lot of success professionally in part because he was so effective at employing social media, adding that it “can be a force for good for people and also bad things can happen on it too.”

Melugin also contrasted social media platforms’ efforts to moderate the content with a government call for removing certain content.

“Where we start to worry is when the government starts calling for the forced removal of things. That’s a very different thing than the platforms saying, ‘We want to keep our users happy and we want to curate this so it’s a safe place for people to be,’ rather than the government saying, ‘Hey American citizens, you’re not allowed to see this,'” she said. “Those are two very, very different things I think legally and with the spirit of free speech.”

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