Freedom Of Speech And The Socials.

Social media undoubtedly, has proven to be an effective global platform for expression and interaction among individuals from all walks of life. You have something to say? Put it out there on any of the socials and watch it go viral and spread across the globe with few seconds. A lot of people take to these media forums to voice out and express their concerns over matters in different categories.

With its inception, social media has served as the voice of the unheard population as individuals freely express their opinions like never before. It's evident that with the help of social media, individuals have been opportuned with better chances of exercising their freedom of speech, a right fundamental to all human beings on Earth.

Due to the open and free nature of the digital world, it has appeared that there is no limit to how far people can go to exercise that right. The freedom of speech have been abused and misused on social media through various means, at a rate increasing becoming alarming as the day goes by. Most users of various social media handles have misinterpreted their right to freely express themselves as a prompt to say whatever they wish, however they wish to without any regard to the receiving end. Some of the ways social media users abuse the freedom of speech are addressed in this post.

Spreading unverified information
On the social web, there's always one rumor or the other going around. A lot of people on the social web tend to be more interested in spreading the trending news than actually seeking to verify how true the information can be. We may have probably come across cases where someone comes online to debunk a false news after it must have gone viral. In some situations, it takes a lot of time before people come to know the true story behind a rumor that was spread on social media. Individuals who fake stories and spread them abuse the right to freedom of speech, such misleading stories have their terrible aftermath to the victims involved.

Cyberbullying.
It is true that freedom of speech grants people the right to express themselves. That right does not extend to harmful and abusive speech as it is common on social media. Most users of social media use these platforms to harass and bully fellow users through their hurtful comments just to cause emotional distress to the victims.

Cyberbullies are often lurking around in the comment sections of social media posts. Someone might innocently make a post about anything in particular only to open the comments space and face all sorts of derogatory comments, sometimes even comments unrelated to the subject of the post, all in a bid to cause harm to the victim.

Source
The issue of body shaming individuals have sadly taken a toll in most social media platforms. It is very saddening to see how some internet users channel all their energy in mocking a fellow user about how they look. This misuse of speech creates a negative and unhealthy online environment which may further lead to serious damage to the victim. Cases have been reported how someone commited suicide all because of the much bullying that occurs online. This is a total abuse of the right to freedom of speech.

Defamation of character.
Most people who use social media are very quick to call out other people say all kinds of bad things about them which are not true. Someone might spend half of his lifetime building a reputation only to have someone else trash it in a 20 seconds reel or even a single line comment. Recently in Nigeria, there was a huge saga on X between a very popular female gospel singer and another X user.

The singer shared lovely pictures of her first baby on her X handle, only to have someone insinuate that there might have been a hidden infidelity story between the gospel singer and another singer whom she worked with years back. In his comment under the post, he said the the singer's baby looks so much like another male gospel singer other than the true father of the baby and even suggested to have a DNA test conducted to determine the paternity of the child.

That comment prompted a lot of people to also suggest the same thing and before you know it, it was already making headlines in a lot of blogs that a gospel singer allegedly cheated on her husband and had a baby with an outside partner. That issue was handled legally and the persons involved in spreading such malicious information were duly called to order. Instances likes this do not just tarnishes someone's reputation but it causes a lot of emotional stress to the person involved.

Freedom of speech is everyone's right, yet it is to be taken to heart that not all speech should be freely expressed, especially ones that can bounce back with ugly consequences. The social media is an effective avenue of communication in today's modern world, still, users should take care not to use it as a platform for abusing and misusing their right to freedom of speech.

This is in response to the Day 3 prompt topic by InLeo. To know more and join the monthly prompt for the month of May, follow this link
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