Hashtags and Hate Speech: The Legal and Ethical Responsibilities of Social Media Companies to Manage Content Online

This essay looks at the hate speech policies of three social media organizations: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to see what type of content is and is not permitted on each of these different platforms. The second part of this essay considers Supreme Court and lower court rulings regarding hate speech and Internet regulation to determine what, if any, opportunity exists to legally require social media companies to minimize the amount of hate speech on their sites. In Part III of this essay, the ethical obligations of social media organizations are discussed. Part IV concludes with the argument that social media organizations should work to minimize hate speech on their sites and do so in a transparent way.