**TL;DR - While there are some good intentions in censoring offensive content by creating limits and curbing access to harmful activities, censorship also deeply affects the way people access information and invades our rights.** As social media continues to dominate society, censoring offensive content can help create limits and prevent people from seeing harmful content. Considering social media is quite accessible, censorship can be especially useful for underage viewers. However, there are many cons to internet censorship and avoiding offensive content can do more harm than good. For example, it is important to question who is making the rules and what checks and balances are in place. In this sense, internet censorship could become opinionated on what is acceptable and not. Moreover, it encroaches on our rights and could potentially limit our free speech in preventing what people want to post and share.

**There is a problem with allowing offensive content online when it reaches children or allows hate groups to flourish.** - Some people argue that censorship just draws hate groups into darker corners of the internet. However, I think removing them from more public spaces does make it less likely for children to stumble across harmful content or for hate speech to be framed as legitimate and acceptable. - Banning people from certain platforms can be effective. Milo Yiannopoulos who was banned from Twitter in 2016 definitely has less buzz around him than in his Twitter days. Some [research](https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/what-happened-when-donald-trump-was-banned-from-social-media/) even suggests that Donald Trump is affected by the Twitter Ban. Before the ban, Trump’s posts had 22.1 million likes and shares, while after they had 1.3 million across Twitter and Facebook. - The main issue with censorship is that it is difficult to actually implement without bias. Activist Caroline Wysinger makes an excellent point about how [moderation is limited due to AI flagging violent images about racism and transphobia](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/censorship-social-media-conservative-liberal-cbsn-originals/), without being able to distinguish the purpose behind the image. From April to June 2020, 95 percent of comments flagged as hate speech on Facebook and 99.2 percent of comments taken down for violating community standards were [flagged by AI.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/censorship-social-media-conservative-liberal-cbsn-originals/) There are many issues with censoring offensive content and no clear way to do it successfully. However as everyone, including children, resides on the internet these days, some level of censorship is important to keep people safe and establish some code of conduct online.

To censor offensive material is the same as denying it happens