Balancing free speech while curbing misinformation has destroyed content moderation

Extremist groups have used Facebook to propagate misinformation and recruit members

For years, Facebook has been accused of taking a too-light approach to content moderation. While it's made strides in recent years, problematic content continues to thrive on the company's platforms.

Social media can reinforce echo chambers that amplify pre-existing sentiments

A 2023 Nature study showed that exposure to diverse content left participants with unchanged core beliefs, suggesting social media alone cannot create hateful viewpoints. However, such platforms allow rhetoric to spread widely, potentially exacerbating geopolitical tensions.

Governments are now using generative AI to manipulate public opinion

A Freedom House report found that AI-powered disinformation campaigns and censorship tactics are spreading, with 16 countries utilizing the technology to shape online narratives or suppress dissent, as of 2023. In Venezuela, deepfake software was used to push pro-government propaganda with fake news anchors.

Social media algorithms are shaping real-life language through memes

The evolution of the internet in the early 2000s supercharged the creation and spread of memetic content. Now, highly tuned algorithms on platforms like TikTok and YouTube influence the language, phrasing, and content of creators, which shapes how we use language in the real world.

The 'Facebook papers' revealed the company prioritized profit over public safety

A whistleblower came forward with internal documents showing employees warned leadership about the company's role in fueling political unrest and misinformation. Systems like XCheck shielded high-profile users like President Donald Trump from normal content rules, often to avoid PR backlash.

Data privacy advocates worry that Google collects too much personal information

Politicians have also criticized whether the search engine exerts too much control over gatekeeping online information and influencing what is considered fact or fiction, deviating from its original corporate motto of "don't be evil."

Tech giants like SpaceX and Meta are increasingly behaving like sovereign powers

Companies now make unilateral decisions once reserved for nation-states, such as controlling satellite internet access in active war zones and influencing global information flows. Lawmakers and the international order are struggling to keep up with technological developments, let alone regulate them.

Global support for free speech and press freedom has declined since 2019

A 2025 Pew Research survey found that the share of people worldwide who consider free speech and press freedom important has declined over the past several years, even though majorities in most countries still say these rights matter.

On social media, satire is often mistaken for news

A 2018 study found that satire was often mistaken for legitimate fact, with stories from outlets like The Onion being shared widely without any understanding of their satirical intent. Likewise, the study found that media outlets often mislabeled satire as "fake news," a label that implies disinformation rather than social commentary.

The majority of Meta's revenue comes from advertising

Since introducing Facebook Ads in 2007, ads have become the main way Meta makes money and keeps the social media platforms free for users. Meta's targeted ad program allows businesses to set a maximum advertising budget and be charged only for the actual number of impressions an ad receives. In 2025, $196.175B of Meta's $200.966B annual revenue came from advertising.

Treating X like a product instead of a public space obscures deeper issues

Public outrage over Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition misses the point that the social platform has long failed to address hate speech, not just under Musk's ownership. Over 150,000 mentions of "leaving Twitter" were recorded over the weekend following Musk's takeover.

The dark web protects free speech from censorship and authoritarian oversight

Encrypted networks allow users with internet access anywhere in the world to view blocked content and avoid surveillance when communicating evidence of abuse to independent journalists. The same networks can support democracies by helping activists coordinate protests on dark web forums.

Section 230 is the law that shaped the modern internet—and free speech online

Passed as part of the Communications Decency Act, Section 230 shields online platforms from legal liability for user-generated content while allowing them to moderate it and host speech freely, making it one of the most debated laws governing free expression today.

Explore how free speech and justice coexist and sometimes clash

From the abolition of slavery to South African apartheid, this podcast explores how censorship has historically been used to suppress racial justice movements—and to promote them—and asks whether free speech is a foundation for, or a threat to, equality.

Unlike the models made by large AI companies, open-weight models can have their safeguards removed or weakened, a process that has become increasingly easy and may expose users to harmful information.

This removal is made possible by developers making the parameters behind their models publicly known. By adjusting these parameters, users can modify how the model processes and provides information. Many of these models can be downloaded locally, preventing developers from seeing how people are using them.

How to help teens balance social media use and mental healthcare

While initially alluring, excessive social media use is proven to lead to increased feelings of isolation, mental health declines, increased stress, and general dissatisfaction among teens. Conducting digital audits to track screen time, adding friction (or obstacles) to app usage to reduce mindless scrolling, and investing time in offline activities and hobbies may help.

According to Bill Nye, science is under threat from an erosion in critical thinking

He states that conducting research online cannot replace consulting with scientific experts who have spent their entire lives intimately studying a field. The former science education show host argues that deepening cynicism towards scientific institutions has been fueled by leaders embracing debunked and unsupported claims.

Douyin is a dominant channel for government propaganda

Driven by strict censorship rules, ByteDance Ltd. spun off TikTok from its sister app Douyin—the version available in China—in order to flourish in international markets. This “60 Minutes” report compares the apps side by side.

The unavailability bias says what we don't see must not exist

Before social media, information was more scarce, and it was the norm not to know much about some controversy or episode. This led to a common prejudice: the availability bias, that what is at hand must be true (in business, the courts, finance, and many fields). With information overload today, the inverse occurs: when something is missing (like the photo of a suspect), it makes us think the suspect does not exist.

Hear from both sides of the attempt to ban books across the country, which spiked by more than 1,100% between 2020 and 2022

During that period, more than 2,500 titles were challenged across 37 states, with activists targeting books on race, slavery, and gender identity. This CBS report hears from the founders of Moms for Liberty, a teacher removed for giving students access to banned books, and "Maus" cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

Norman Rockwell's 'Freedom of Speech' has become an internet meme

The famous painting, which portrays a man in work clothes speaking up in a crowd of men in suits, has become a companion image for internet users posting unpopular or controversial opinions. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Run your own social media Trust & Safety team with this eye-opening game

Ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes at a popular social media company trying to keep users, businesses, and workers safe? Now you can try out your own ideas for moderation and management with this fun and informative game designed to...

Wikipedia openly displays edit history and editorial disputes to assess trustworthiness

Unlike a journal article, which may be reviewed by up to three people before publication, popular Wikipedia pages may be reviewed thousands of times by editors, potentially enhancing their reliability. Less reviewed articles still require reliable third-party sources and remain subject to verification by bots and administrators who can undo edits.

Investigation finds 'influencer' dietitians paid to promote sugar, supplements on social media

A joint investigation by The Examiner and The Washington Post found that food, beverage, and supplement corporations and groups have paid registered dietitians on social media to promote content that goes against decades of scientific evidence on...

Why content disappears from streaming services

The early days of streaming suggested we'd have access to all the world's content whenever we wanted. Those days are now long behind us, with streaming companies removing hundreds of movies and shows from their services, including titles they funded. This explainer from the Guardian argues that the reasons behind this shift are both financial and cultural.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s for weight loss is booming as consumers seek easier access.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

Learn how monoclonal antibodies, which mimic the body's antibodies, can fight diseases like Ebola.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.