Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology

Social media platforms can and should remove incorrect statements about coronavirus by leaders, such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. When incorrect or offensive speech can jeopardize people’s lives, or when statements directly incite violence or physical or emotional abuse, removing and regulating content becomes a moral and policy imperative. Denying the dangers of Covid-19 and the need for policies such as stay-at-home ordinances borders on criminally negligent behavior. Such dangerous demagoguery kills people and undermines public health, social services and economic well-being. And the effects spread beyond borders. Social media are private organizations. Thus, they have the right to choose their standards for ethics and regulations, such as of swearwords or sexually explicit content. But since they serve billions of people around the world as a source of information, they are also semi-public utilities. Accordingly, they also have an obligation to regulate content that leads to violence and deaths. Notoriously, hatred-inciting radio critically inflamed Rwanda’s genocide. Social media platforms have been exploited to ignite Hindu mob violence against Muslims and foreigners and genocide against Rohingyas in Myanmar. Moves by providers of social media to police and remove such content are therefore essential. Removing fallacious content about Covid-19 does not eliminate free speech. Leaders such as Bolsonaro can still give press conferences. And even these pose dangers: accusations by India’s health ministry officials blaming an Islamic seminary for spreading coronavirus, and governing party officials’ vilification of Muslims as ‘human bombs’ spreading ‘corona jihad,’ have set off waves of attacks on Muslims. Such dangerous content could even be exploited to ignite wars or massive civil unrest by outside actors, such as Russia’s use of faked news to manipulate U.S. elections and inflame social protests in Latin America. Social media platforms, governments and civil society groups should adopt a set of policies: They can establish boards and systems to police and remove fake news and lies disguised as reporting and content inciting violence. But as prominent journalist José Díaz-Briseño urges, countries must invest in ‘social media literacy’ to be taught at an early age, teaching people to discern fake from real information.