Substantively, I think people hating other people is a bad thing, but I don’t really see that making them keep quiet about it addresses the problem, other than cosmetically. And, once we set the precedent that it’s okay to restrict some speech if it’s bad enough, then the dam is broken and others are free to try to get more speech restricted according to their various agendas.

Like the old joke.

Man: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars.

Woman: Well, yes.

Man: How about for $100.

Woman (indignantly) What do you think I am?

Man: Madam, we have established what you are. Now we are haggling about the price.

By agreeing to any restriction of speech, we have “established what we are”. At that point the market is open for haggling.

Of course, this ignores the question of government versus private regulation of speech, which I won’t address except to say that a private communication provider has a reasonable right to regulate communication content – as long as that is made clear to the customers when they accept the service. But that right should be used with great discretion.

I won’t go for the easy line “what about the day a country legalize kiddie porn or zoophilia?” — though I talked about it with a Dutch diplomat once, and it’s a really weird scenario, with little legal basis backing anything most everybody here would like to see.

However, I would like your opinion on a Nazi memorabilia sharing group? History lovers by American standards, unacceptable hate-mongers according to French and German laws.

I’m glad the whole thing was a stunt, but I do hope we come with an internationally acceptable position before the internet collapses because of barriers.

“It appears that you have been contacted by a user with the name ‘Adminstrator Josh’ about a group you created on our site. This person was posing as a Facebook employee and is in no way affiliated with the company.”

Just because you have a right to free speech doesn’t mean that an obligation is imposed on someone else to publish it. Free speech doesn’t mean that I can write anything on here for instance, and expect you not to be able to moderate it.

In fact, anything forcing facebook to keep up content would be a violation of free speech, as it is there property and it would imply that they do not have control over what facebook says as an organisation.

Of course, the Arab countries on the other hand are violating rights to free speech (among countless other rights, but thats another story).

I’m afraid the law is pretty clear that facebook is completely within their rights here. Even malls and other pseudo-public spaces that have become de facto town squares offer almost complete discretion to the private owners to set the rules for speech and behavior. As long as they’re not violating nondiscrimination legislation like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, they’re fine. In answer to your broader question about whether ANY online “space” guarantees first amendment protections for its “inhabitants”: unless the victim of censorship can show some kind of legal cause of action for breach of contract or workplace discrimination, there’s probably not much of a legal remedy for private censorship.

This would be a pretty reprehensible policy on the part of Facebook. It seems likely to me that this did not get reviewed by their lawyers or their PR team before going out. The follow-up correspondence from a grunt (see the Berkeley petition message board) seems to lend some support to this theory. I suspect that Facebook is doing what YouTube and everyone else in this space has implemented as a company-wide policy: cave in immediately to bullies and bigots, and let the victims do the work to convince you they deserve to speak. Look at Wendy Seltzer’s adventures with YouTube and the NFL for another recent example of this kind of automated takedown nonsense.

Those two statements seem to be in contradiction to one another. Isn’t some “hate speech” simply a “violation of cultural norms?” I’m not denying that there is such things as genuine harassment and speech that many of us can all agree is hateful and even threatening but the line between “hate speech” and “merely distasteful” seems to be a shifting one, particularly in an international context. I understand the concern but it seems to be a very difficult prohibition to enforce, technically and ethically. And I tend to shy away from limits on speech as they are almost always Bad, particularly in common or public areas. The general guidelines professed to govern the government’s ability to restrict speech – time, place, and manner but not content – seem to be pretty good.

Semantics aside, I empathize with Facebook as they’re in a tight spot. They have to choose between their finances and their morals. I agree that the morally right choice is to allow the group to continue to exist but there may be significant repercussions for the company and its users. Is it worth getting the service banned in those countries to stand up for these ethical and moral values? I think so. Users in those countries who may lose their access may feel differently (but I hope they do not!).