Facebook Takes A Stand Over Holocaust Deniers - Hate Groups

Holocaust Memorial in Miami, Florida
Photo Credit to Prazuquantel - Flicker

The issue that has been lighting up keyboards from around the world is the use of 'social networks', like Facebook, MySpace, even YouTube to promote often times a particular ideological position on religion, politics, history. You name it, it pretty much can be found. Just when do subscriber groups cross the line and what should be done about them?

CNET

From Christian Science Monitor

The problem we have with sites that published false information on the internet or even in the media, is that if false information is repeated enough times it becomes an 'accepted truth.' An example is the Irish youth who added a quote to a author on Wikipedia as a hoax. Well, it stayed there and finally was picked up by news organizations who did not check their sources and it was published. The hoax was uncovered and the mainstream media had to apologize. The problem we are looking at is the ethics which we all hold to be self evident in anything we see in print. But, this is not the case with hate groups who spew so much vile speech into the arena of the internet. Yes, they have a right to their opinions, but they are not being held accountible for false, misleading or slanderous speech to include hate speech and death threats. No one is taking recourse. Here in the United States the Supreme Court has ruled that you cannot stand up in a theatre and scream fire, it endangers people. I concur with the court here and would like to see it applied to the internet which is a free for all right now.

No, I am not advocating complete censorship. I am talking about speech that is used in any form to promote violence and injury to others.

So we must speak out when we see it. I can certainly see where ethical application of the true intent of 'freedom of speech' will someday end up in the courts.

I look forward to that ruling.