Courtney Radsch on CNN: Should Social Media Ban Racist Conspiracy Theories?

Talking to CNN, CMDS Fellow Courtney Radsch argued against banning the discussion of the racist conspiracy theory that motivated the mass shooter in Buffalo, NY, calling for other means to deal with such ideologies.

Speaking on the CNN program Smerconish, Courtney Radsch said social media platforms had their First Amendment right in the US to decide what they wanted to allow to be said and what they did not want to allow to be said on their platforms.

This means that they could try to ban the “great replacement theory,” and other vile ideologies. Yet Courtney Radsch said they should not ban discussions.

“We have already seen this tried in legislation, to ban the discussion of Critical Race Theory in the classroom. We should not see bans of theories; we should see bans of promotion, and the demotion of accounts glorifying these ideologies," she said, adding that we should try to get these ideologies out of the mainstream.

Social media companies can decide that they will not add fuel to the fire. They can make it harder to find these videos and these manifestos... They do not have to promote such accounts,” she said.