In "Facebook wants to crack down against hate speech on migrants" (2016), BBC newsbeat reports that Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has agreed with German authorities that racist hate speech is something that there is "now ... no tolerance for on Facebook." Although there is rising opposition in Germany to its government's policy of accepting refugees from countries such as Syria, Germany's history from the Second World War also means that today it has strong laws against hate speech that might threaten minorities. German authorities think that Facebook has not been fast enough in the past to remove hate speech according to German law because such removal conflicted with other Facebook priorities.
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My Yes/No question is:
Is Zuckerberg right to block hate speech on Facebook?
My answer is:
Yes, but not everywhere and definitely not because it's what German law demands. Except for people who do it, like the Burmese Buddhists who want to suppress or expel the Rohingya people, or people who say things like "All Muslims are terrorists," or people who say that gays or transgender people are sick, most people probably agree that hate speech is disgusting and not the sort of thing that decent people say. Unfortunately, hate speech is also very common, whether directed at racial groups, at sexuality groups, at religious groups, at political groups, or some other group defined by what they are, think or do.
I think that the German laws against this hate speech are wrong because governments, even with good intentions, should not so interfere in free speech. However, Facebook is not a government and as a private business it is entitled to set conditions of good manners for its users. This includes maintaining polite public spaces for all, just as hate speech can reasonably be banned by private individuals in their homes and on their media outlets. On private groups or posts that the public cannot view, Facebook should allow even vile, offensive filth if that's what some people like, but it is reasonable to block such things on public parts of Facebook. Of course, offensive comments to other users should be blocked, and we FB users can already do that: we don't need German law to force it done for us.
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