A media professor at New York University said that online hate speech should be censored to avoid incidents like the Buffalo, NY, shooting. Gabrielle Gambrell made the comments in an appearance on the “Dr. Phil Show.”
Gambrell, who has previously worked at CBS, NBC, and Barnard College, alleged that there is a difference between being funny and being offensive.
While introducing her, Dr. Phil said that she was someone who “says hate speech and inappropriate behavior should be censored on social media, right?”
Responding to the host, Gambrell said she does and though she is “extremely in favor of the First Amendment,” she believes there should be exceptions to free speech. She used the mass shooting in Buffalo last year to try and support her point.
“We have seen things that happen when social media is not censored,” she said. “The horrific incident that happened in Buffalo, the individual that shot up the supermarket in Buffalo, New York had tremendous amounts of things on his social media that should have triggered some people saying, ‘hey this guy should not have access to legally get a firearm,’ so in certain instances where it’s harmful in certain instances where it could hurt people where there’s negative intent, there should be censorship.”
Gambrell continued to say she gets thrilled when someone is fired for saying something controversial.
“In some instances where I see viral videos where someone is clearly racist or homophobic or anything nasty and then the video goes viral they lose their job, I’m like ‘score’ because that person does not deserve to have this title which can impact certain communities, they need to work on themselves,” she said.
