[479] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Facebook Falls Into Censorship Trap Over Holocaust
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Tue May 12 15:56:36 2009
Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 12:31:36 -0700
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Facebook Falls Into Censorship Trap Over Holocaust Deniers
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000565.html
Greetings. Well, if this commentary doesn't net me a new personal
record in received hate mail I'll probably be a wee bit disappointed,
but like I always say, I call 'em as I see 'em, and while sometimes
what I see isn't pretty, beauty isn't everything.
Deep breath. OK, here we go ...
As you probably know, Facebook has been embroiled in controversy over
the presence of "Holocaust Denial" groups on the site. Facebook just
banned two of these groups that Facebook says degenerated into hate
speech (specifically banned by the Facebook Terms of Service) and let
others stay active.
Pressure on Facebook to shut down *all* of these groups has been
heavy, especially from Brian Cuban, a Texas attorney and the brother
of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
Brian Cuban -- who news stories are noting is of Russian-Jewish
descent -- seems to be in an apoplectic rage in his demands that
Facebook engage in broad censorship of concepts that he finds
disgusting.
Well I have a news flash for Mr. Cuban, in three parts:
(1) He's not the only person with a family tree of that sort.
(2) He's not the only one who finds Holocaust denial to be repugnant.
(3) He's completely wrong in his demands to Facebook.
All of the screaming, yelling, and associated emotionalism is
pointless. To use football terminology, they do nothing to advance
the ball.
What such actions often do accomplish is to make the parties involved
look like stubborn ideologues without any concept of common sense.
This behavior isn't restricted to Internet controversies. Some years
ago, we saw the inanity of complaints about U.S. government buildings
that happened to have a swastika shape when viewed from the air, and
the government caving in via plans to spend significant sums to
camouflage the shapes. Utter nonsense.
Just yesterday, I watched an ambulance (shadowed by news helicopters)
transporting an ill almost 90-year-old man -- not Joseph Goebbels or
Josef Mengele, but an accused Nazi prison camp guard -- for
deportation back to Germany, after decades of court battles and the
dismissal of his case in Israel years ago. A total waste of time and
resources.
And now we have people clamoring for Facebook to shut down this or
that form of objectionable speech, with censorship proponents pointing
to countries with oppressive censorship laws as preferred models for
the entire Internet.
Facebook of course is free to set their own usage policies, and
they've been involved in a number of other content-related
controversies. But let's face it, the Holocaust denial case makes
Facebook's "images of lactating females" problems pale by comparison.
OK, now here's my "demand" for those parties trying to tell Facebook,
and other services around the Web, how they should control content:
Stop trying to be the damned nannies for the Internet!
All through human history, governments, religions, and all other
manner of groups have attempted to control information toward the ends
that they felt were just and good. Inevitably, such censorship
attempts have ultimately failed, and often made a bad situation worse
from the standpoint of the would-be censors, by driving the
discussions in question underground, where they of course continued.
It doesn't matter how angelic or demonic the topic, whether we're
talking about the peaks of virtuous truths or the epitome of evil
lies, trying to control information by censorship is like holding sand
in your clenched fist.
The only practical answer to bad and hateful speech isn't attempts at
censorship.
The solution is *more speech*, not less. The answer is to allow
sunlight to push away the darkness, not trying to bottle up the
darkness out of view where it will continue to grow and fester in ways
even more difficult to easily monitor.
We talk about the 21st century "information society" and the vast
benefits that it could bring to mankind. But these benefits will not
accrue unless we start allowing people to make their own decisions
about information, and stop treating them as imbeciles incapable of
discerning reality.
The key to accomplishing this is the setting forth of a cornucopia of
accurate information, not attempts to suppress that which is false, or
indeed, even hateful.
Until we make this transition in our handling of information, we will
be seen by those who wish to exploit us as incompetent boobs, fit only
to be treated as such.
There is much of the 20th century that we must not ever forget. But
there are also aspects that are failed artifacts, best relegated to
the past -- censorship is certainly one of these.
It's time to grow up.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
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