Imagine a world where sites like YouTube and Facebook did
not exist. A world where one could not share their thoughts through the click
of a mouse, or the touch of a button. This is a world where everything online
is censored and the only way to share what you’re really thinking is through
word of mouth. We should not be controlling what is posted online. If we do
what are we really losing? Culture? Social networks? Jobs?
We live in an age where the online world has become part of
our global culture and ingrained into our everyday lives. We can see our
culture everyday online; YouTube is a prime example. There are over half a
billion channels on YouTube with over 70 hours of video uploaded every minute
and it is available in over 60 languages. All the users and videos from all
over the world create a vibrant global culture online. The censoring of this
site and those like it would mean censoring of the global culture.
What democratic country censors a culture? Such an abhorrent
act seems impossible of the western world yet if we were to regulate what
people post online this would become a reality. We would lose our global
culture due to the possibility of causing offence or alienation. Our Internet
would be reduced to something devoid of entertainment. The internet would be
the laughing stock of the modern world and our global culture would be lost
forever. What do we really stand to lose when we control what is posted online?
The beginning of the control of what is posted online marks
the end of Social Networks as we know them.
Sites like Facebook and Twitter would cease to exist. The sheer task of
censoring the billion monthly active users on Facebook would mean it would take
days for a post to actually go out to friends. People are not going to wait
days to tell people what is happening right now. They will begin to stop using
these sites and the companies like Facebook and Twitter will not be able to
keep up with running costs and will have to shut down. Thousands of jobs would
be lost for what?
What do we really stand to gain through controlling what is
posted online? Is this insignificant gain important enough to cost thousands
their jobs? Can we really bare the guilt associated with mass job loss just to
protect our feelings? Thousands of people will have to go home one night and have to explain to their families why they will be no longer working. Thousands of
families will struggle to make ends meet. Thousands of relationships will be
put under stress, hundreds doomed to end. These jobs not only include the
companies like Twitter and Facebook but also the local petrol station and café
which rely on the workers coming in for breaks or to refill their cars on the
way home from work. What about the local shopping centre that will lose
customers? What about the children who will grow up in strained families where
tension is always waiting around the corner? How will they cope when their
families can no longer afford to pay for their school, hobbies or interests?
How is a five or eight year old going to understand why they cannot have what
their friends have and the concepts of unemployment? Controlling what is posted online will lead to pointless
loss of jobs and will cause an emotional ripple effect.
The censoring of what is posted online will become one of
the modern tragedies of our time. If we let this happen what do we stand to
lose? Our global culture is surely doomed for extinction and the internet would
be set to become the laughing stock of our generation. Then there are the
social media networks that would no longer exist and the jobs they caused
becoming redundant. Our entire economy would suffer just to protect our fragile
feelings. Thousands of families will stand to lose so much more than their
feelings if we begin to monitor what is posted online. We should not monitor
what is posted online because we stand to lose so much more than hurt feelings
if we do.
The above was my speech for an oral presentation on the prompt "should we be allowed to post whatever we want online?" I presented this speech yesterday in English.
May the odds be ever in your favour, see you tomorrow!
Now a days internet is so important in our life thus The censorship of the internet is doing nothing but hurting the users and the platforms. dissertation Writing Service
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