Facebook's Dilema

Facebook is facing a real dilema it seems. According to a report by the folks at the Blog-a-torium site the people at Facebook are knee deep in the Free Speech versus Censorship issue. It seems that Brian Cuban, a Dallas attorney who runs The Cuban Revolution Blogsite, has been fighting to have the people at Facebook remove various Holocaust-denial groups from the Facebook site on the grounds that the sites is hate speech that promotes antisemitism. Meanwhile, Facebook's stance is that the pages, although distasteful and offensive, are not against Facebook's policies. The issue expanded from being a disagreement between Mr. Cuban and Facebook to being an item picked up by numerous blogs and news agencies.

The variety of responses to this issue ranges widely, it seems people from all viewpoints in the spectrum have made their comments upon this issue. This has become one hot topic that could serve as a litmus test for future handling of social media sites and other forums across the net in the future.

A vast number of people make reference to such things as laws which govern the freedom of speech and freedom of expression. while others point out that this isn't necessarily a 'legal' issue - it's more of a moral or ethical issue. Many have brought up the point of Facebook being a 'Private Entity', which are not governed by the first amendment. Others brought up the point that in some countries "hate speech" is against the law and by Facebook allowing their site to broadcast illegal content into their country, Facebook is in violation of the laws of those countries.

The debate rages on...

The real question is "What is at stake here?"

One school of thought is that these pages offer no threat to anyone, the things posted to the pages are merely the viewpoint of a particular group of people. They stand on the ground that if we censor things simply because we find the content 'distasteful' then we subject ourselves to the 'thought police' and begin the downward spiral into an Orwellian 1984-like existence.

Another school of thought is that these pages are just another step in the steadily declining moral and ethical values of our society. They concern themselves with the issue of "Where does the nonsense end?" Do we allow ourselves to become so apathetic over things that we allow another Hitler to rise to power, or worse, simply because we are afraid of 'policing' ourselves??

It's an interesting debate.