The death threats on social media have to lead to regulation.

Why can Danny Green miss the winning shot and have his life threatened on social media, when that could not happen to him in any other media form? Not in the comment section of an online post or a threatening call to a talk radio show without serious consequences.

Twitter and Facebook, which have both been out of control for years, are finally saying they are going to monitor pre-election posts. But it needs to go further than that.

Free speech and free press in this country are backbones of democracy, and never should a legitimate opinion be quashed. But the FCC has regulations over how far those opinions and free speech can go, and if someone tries post what you read on social media in a regulated form of media, it is not allowed.

This all happened because Facebook and Twitter began without regulatory oversight, so who was going to stop them? And look what has happened to these two mediums driven by the billions of dollars they both make. There is some censorship, but not nearly enough.

You might think threats against Green, the former UNC star who has now won NBA titles with three different teams, came from a crazy Lakers’ fan or someone who lost a big bet, but what about the plan to kidnap and perhaps kill the governor of Michigan? It was discovered and tracked on Facebook.

The owners of the biggest social media platforms have been reluctant to take away a poster’s freedom of speech. But the national mainstream media and radio-television networks seem to monitor that kind of behavior. Even satellite radio has some standards.

Danny Green and his fiancé may say it doesn’t bother them, that they rarely look at social media. But it bothered the hell out of me because I see some crazy stuff on Facebook and Twitter, and I don’t even check them that much.

The independent media in this country cannot print and say anything it wants. It’s time for the government to impose reasonable regulations on social media that is helping tear apart our nation.

Featured image via Associated Press

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