Comments on: Facebook confirms removal of two Holocaust denial groups. Is it enough?

Facebook spokesman says the groups remaining will be monitored more closely. It is unlikely that the debate will end there.

[Larry Fafarman]

lynez9 says --
--"Larry Fafarman, sorry, but all holocaust denial and revisionism IS anti semetic! " --

I say that's ********. I say that the only purpose of saying that is to try to shut down debate. And if you are entitled to that opinion, then others are entitled to their opinions.

[Understarsidream]

You cannot play the freedom speech card when it comes to private enterprise. Anyone who says otherwise needs to go back to school.

[Larry Fafarman]

Understarsidream said,
--You cannot play the freedom speech card when it comes to private enterprise. Anyone who says otherwise needs to go back to school. --

You are the one who needs to go back to school, doofus. Did you ever hear, for example, of the now-dormant Fariness Doctrine? That was an FCC rule that required private broadcasters to present the different sides in controversies. Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo was a lawsuit that challenged a Florida "right of reply" statute that granted a political candidate a right to equal space to answer criticism and attacks on his record by a newspaper. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the statute by a vote of 8-1 (that decision was later overturned by the US Supreme Court, though).

[Larry Fafarman]

I think that the key words here are "good faith" in 47 USC §230 (c) (2)(A) --

--(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of --
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;--

With thousands of groups and millions of visitors per day, there is no way that Facebook could possibly make a "good faith" effort to eliminate all or even most of the hate speech posted in Facebook groups. Facebook has no choice but to attack hate speech in a very discriminatory fashion. And there are no objective criteria for identifying hate speech. To a lot of people, any questioning of official holocaust history constitutes hate speech. And as I said, hate speech can be planted by opponents of the Facebook sites.

And please, let's forget about comparison to the censorship of the breastfeeding Facebook sites. For one thing, the standards for censorship are completely different for the breastfeeding and the holocaust-denial sites. And even if the censorship of the breastfeeding sites is wrong, two wrongs don't make a right.

Facebook let these holocaust-denial groups become established on Facebook and then pulled the rug out from under them, and the groups need to have some legal recourse against this kind of treachery.

[inachu1]

The holocaust portrayal is not fair to all humans.
The holocaust does not stand for all humans victimized by genocide.
It only portrays jews,gypsies and gays.
The holocaust meuseum is racist in the extreme and if they had any honor they would include all races who have been victimized by genocide. But some races think they are special.
20 years after 30 million christians were kill the people alive at the time could still have said, "How could this have been done in modern times?!?!"
But the same thing is being said today but with special treatment.

[nackereia]

You're forgetting the physically and mentally handicapped that were also victimized in that genocide.

[Amir-Omar]

a question should arise, would Facebook take the same actions towards any group that promotes hate or violence?!!
for instance, would facebook stop groups claiming terrorism linked to Islam and enhancing hate towards muslims while they're representing a wide proportion of facebook users, or would stop a group denies the scientific advances documented by the early muslim scholars (as a historical fact).
and so on for other ethnic or cultural communities.
if its a concept, it would be developed equally towards all facebook users from different cultures.

[StarCMC]

"following attorney Brian Cuban's consistent pressure for the groups' removal."

Yes, Cuban was applying pressure, but just FYI. the JIDF has been on this for a LONG time. I guess his having a ton of dough gives Cuban the notoriety to garner attention. It would be nice if he would give credit to the organization that got the ball rolling.

[buckwheat123]

Denying the existence of the holocaust should not be reason to remove someone from facebook. If being ignorant or making ignorant statements was a crime, there would be few of us around.

[treet007]

If these so-called hate groups have a problem with Facebook, they can always have their own web sites. Other hate or negative-oriented groups have done just that.

[Itsashammy]

This is ridiculous. It is not anti-semitic to question the official accounts of events during the holocaust. The knee-jerk respondents to this story are all behaving as though governments and official agencies haven't lied to them in the past. WAKE UP!

It is FACT that most of the media interests in North America are run by Jews. Is it so hard to fathom the possibility that they have been clouding facts or furthering the Jewish community's interests through these channels?

I am not anti-semitic in the least. None of you know me, but my family is Jewish. Thankfully my ancestry hasn't forced me to accept everything at face value. I have a free mind, and I choose to exercise it.

Perhaps more of you should do the same.

[chambcm]

Yet again, some public loudmouth makes a complaint and a company caves. Sad. Where does the cencorship end? Since when are people not allowed to have an opinion (even if it's ignorant)? While I don't agree with the groups that are being banned or their message (yes, I believe the holocaust happened and was terribble), so what if these obviously delusional people have a site where they believe otherwise? Unless they have done something directly to incite violence, they should be free to have an opinion.

[FiresideLL]

Chris,

It seems like you are somewhat opposed to the policy of letting the marketplace of ideas take care of the situation until the content of the groups becomes far too inciteful to tolerate. The marketplace of ideas is one of the cornerstones of a free society, and should be preserved to great lengths. If I may present a quote from J.S. Mill:

"The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

[OlderThanOld]

In the collision of truth with error, and the inevitable triumph of truth over error, I have some historical citations. Follow me now: Taliban, North Korea, Russia, Al Qaeda, Fred Phelps. In the sweep of history, there may (and I say, may) be a sort of inevitability; at least the participants will change over time, and perhaps new ideas will emerge. Is the triumph of "truth" inevitable, though. I remain unconvinced.

[FiresideLL]

Older:

It is not necessarily that those who are on the side of falsehood will eventually change their ways. It is not necessarily the triumph of truth which is the goal. Rather, the entire population benefits by the collision of truth with error. The morons may never change their ways, but confronting them with truth and convincing the rest of the population that their ideas are false is the way to ensure that they remain marginal.

[OlderThanOld]

Please explain how one convinces the rest of the population that the morons' ideas are false. From what I've seen and read of history, the outcome of that particular exercise is what we have today--the "post-modern" era, where truth is malleable and the response to propositions is often "whatever..."

To say that I'm cynical that "progress" is unstoppable would be an understatement, if progress is defined as the increasing preponderance of rationality and sensibility in human affairs. I don't see a technological, legal, or political "solution" for the "problem" of humanity's penchant for doing things that are decidedly not in its best interest.

For the record, I believe that the free, open, and lively exchange of opinions has some value. That value isn't unconditional, though, and opinion sooner or later has to give way to a grasp of the world as it is. The old saying is that opinions are like... , because everyone has one. That should give some indication to just how valuable opinions are, by themselves.

[OlderThanOld]

To those individuals who have posted opinions that Freedom of Speech covers _all_ speech, and applies equally to Facebook and speeches in the public square, please read the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

We're not talking about something that is illegal; we're talking about a policy violation that Facebook has cited as a reason for removing these groups from their site. Facebook will no doubt have to endure the complaints of some free-speech zealots for stopping some forms of debate related to the Holocaust-denial advocates. However, since we're talking about a place made available for personal expression by a corporate entity, and one that has acceptable use policies that everyone using it has tacitly agreed to, that's all that they'll likely remain--complaints. The web being what it is, Holocaust deniers can get a website of their own and put their own opinions up for public viewing. Then, they can be argued without interference by advocates and critics.

Denying something happened doesn't have any bearing on whether it really happened. It just means that you aren't equipped to deal with reality.

[nackereia]

Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle hard core drugs.

[Matthew Es]

Facebook can do what they want. They dont exist to serve everyone and their own agendas. If those people want to form their hate group they can do it elsewhere.

[Larry Fafarman]

OlderThanOld said (May 12, 2009 11:09 AM PDT) --
--"We're not talking about something that is illegal; we're talking about a policy violation that Facebook has cited as a reason for removing these groups from their site. Facebook will no doubt have to endure the complaints of some free-speech zealots for stopping some forms of debate related to the Holocaust-denial advocates."--

You ignored my legal analyses that are based on 47 USC §230 and Miami Herald v. Tornillo --

http://news.cnet.com/8618-17852_3-10237855.html?communityId=2101&targetCommunityId=2101&blogId=71&messageId=7923597&tag=mncol

http://news.cnet.com/8618-17852_3-10237855.html?communityId=2101&targetCommunityId=2101&blogId=71&messageId=7925172&tag=mncol

http://news.cnet.com/8618-17852_3-10237855.html?communityId=2101&targetCommunityId=2101&blogId=71&messageId=7925132&tag=mncol

OlderThanOld, I hope that you are not too old to learn.

[FiresideLL]

Larry,

Your "legal analyses" are questionable, at best.

47 USC 230 only protects Facebook, and I'm not quite sure what you think its applicability is here. Facebook is not bound by the constricts of the First Amendment. I'm not quite sure how you analogize Miami Herald to the situation at hand.

First, your basis for the Miami Herald argument is seemingly DESPITE the fact that the Flori-duh Supreme Court's decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States. Such an argument is thoroughly unfathomable--making an argument based on caselaw overturned by the highest court in the nation? On what planet does THAT make sense?

Second, the "fairness doctrine," which by the way, was not a mandatory rule, only applied to *broadcast license holders*. Show me where Facebook needs to get a license from the FCC for their website. Moreover, as previously acknowledged, SCOTUS overturned the application of the Florida statute based on the fact that it applied to NEWSPAPERS (who are unlicensed with a much broader competition base) rather than broadcast media. Clearly a website is MUCH more akin to print newspapers than it is broadcast media, for much the same reason--anyone can start up a website to compete or espouse their personal views, no license required.

Put simply, if you went to law school, and that is the best legal reasoning you can do, you should ask for a refund. If you haven't, then I suggest not trying to engage in meaningful "legal analysis" until you do.

[Mosephus]

Pesky Devil, that first amendment. By stifling the ideas we near universally condemn, we jeopardize the ideals we all hold dear. Best to ignore and endure.

[FiresideLL]

I agree with your general sentiment, but that first sentence is an abomination. The First Amendment has NOTHING to do with it. At all. Period. Ok? Good.

Marketplace of ideas = good. Glad we can agree on that.

[kaifanun]

If that is the case then there are at least 10 (I'm sure more) Anti-Armenian Genocide Groups actively live on Facebook. They should be removed as well.

[snesich]

Facebook isn't the government. It has the right, as a private entity, to ban anything it wants, for any reason. I'm glad Facebook is being discerning. I don't agree with the idea that "anything goes" under the argument of "Hey, Free Speech!"

What if someone wanted to start a Facebook group called "People Who Hate (the n-word)". Would that be okay too? Would Facebook be wrong if it refused to allow this?

[Larry Fafarman]

The following Facebook TOS provision -- which was originally cited by Brian Cuban -- has been removed (!) from the Facebook TOS --

--?upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offense, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law.?--
http://www.briancuban.com/facebook-at-odds-with-obama-on-holocaust-denial/

The Facebook TOS are here:
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

However, the prohibitions against pornography and nudity, which were used against the Facebook breastfeeding sites, are still there --

--"You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence. "--

My general feeling about the nudity on the Facebook breastfeeding sites is that women who post these nude photos are trying to desexualize female breasts, but I don't think that is possible. Because of their size, shape, and soft texture, female breasts are the sexiest sexual characteristic -- primary or secondary -- in both sexes.

[FiresideLL]

Larry, you still have not responded to my skewering of your supposed legal arguments. I am waiting.