Introduction
This is a report investigating the debate competition held in our school several days ago.
The reason
This report has been prepared under the request of our class teacher as he was not able to participate in the event.
The debate
The topic selected for the debate was whether social media companies should be held responsible for the content shared by the users on their platforms or not, where government side claimed that they were responsible in all aspects, while the opposition defended that they were not. Each side had 3 speakers.
The government side took the first turn talking. They had quite sensible points, which were explained to the audience using appropriate communication techniques. It was pointed out that the social media companies had total control on their platforms, which was not limited as well. And they also claimed these companies were morally and ethically responsible to society, which “should be resulting in these companies taking every single measure possible to make their platforms more ‘sterile’”.
After the government, the opposition side started talking, who had valuable statistics and numerical data to strengthen their points. They started their presentation from a point which seemed senseless to the audience at the beginning: freedom of speech. After, the speakers continued with access to free speech and its legal status. They showed by data that posting on social media was quite easy under the freedom of speech, so it was very hard for the companies to “keep up”, and that the companies could not totally be held responsible as they defended the social media was ethically a public property.
Summary
Looking at the bigger picture, both sides defended their points well, using different techniques. Considering that this particular topic is very complicated and massively discussed by intellectual community as well, I think both sides deserve to be considered successful.