The thorny issue of freedom of speech on Social Networks

Interesting debate breaking out about freedom of speech on social networks, with a furore over Holocaust Denial groups on Facebook. TechCrunch runs a tirade against Facebook:

These groups are clearly little more than excuses to spew hatred towards Jews, and Facebook is too timid to do anything about it. The first amendment doesn’t apply to private companies. So why is Facebook so willing to take a stand when it comes to hungry babies, but won’t do a damn thing when it comes to the Holocaust.

Because they’re cowards.

If Facebook doesn’t want to take a moral or ethical stand on the issue, they can easily make a case that the groups violate their terms of service. These groups violate multiple sections of the TOS, particularly Section 3. There’s an easy way out of this for Facebook, and it also happens to be the right thing to do. Why in the world must they draw a line in the sand and then stand on the same side as Holocaust deniers is beyond me.

Except, of course, that this is exactly where the front line of Freedom of Speech lies. If one were to ban every bunch of people who said things we disagree with and/or were espousing dodgy causes (and one person's dodgy cause is another's righteous duty), it would be a long list of things to ban. But my list would be different from your list, etc etc.... and as one knows, small, active pressure groups are usually able to push through their agendas over those of largely silent majorities.

A sign that Social Nets are coming of age and starting to mirror the community-as-a-whole, rather than the mainly liberal (or fair-weather liberal ? ) mindset of the social media early adopters.

There is clearly a need to deal with ideological extremism (across a wide range of ideologies from religion to reproduction) on social nets, but top down banning may be less effective or democratic than getting the overall community involved (how about setting up a Facebook group to protest, then the true size of support is visible to all?).

Be interesting to see how Facebook deals with this one.... a commercial entity may well take a different decision to a non commercial one, so will we see commercial social nets such as Facebook being less liberal than western society as a whole?

(Personally I think that Holocaust Deniers are misguided eejits by the way, but they are not the only group of people I think are misguided eejits, and far from the most dangerous ones as they are so implausible and aren't trying to change the way the world lives. But I would defend their right to be misguided eejits. And I haven't a clue why Facebook are upset about lactating women.)