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Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg backtracks on comments about Holocaust deniers
Facebook may be locked in a battle against fake news, and now CEO Mark Zuckerberg is backtracking on claims that the social network won't ban Holocaust deniers.
Zuckerberg gave the explanation to Recode after the site aired audio of the Facebook founder claiming "abhorrent" content, the New York Post reported, had a right to spread across his massive social media network.
"I personally find Holocaust denial deeply offensive, and I absolutely didn't intend to defend the intent of people who deny that," Zuckerberg told the website later. "Of course if a post crossed a line into advocating for violence or hate against a particular group, it would be removed. … These issues are very challenging but I believe that often the best way to fight offensive bad speech is with good speech."
Earlier, Zuckerberg had spoken differently.
"I don't think that we should be in the business of having people at Facebook who are deciding what is true and what isn't," he said, during an episode of the Recode Decode podcast on Wednesday.
Ed's note: And if there's one thing we can all agree on regarding limitations to freedom of speech online, it's that we'll never all agree regarding limitations to freedom of speech online!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:05PM
I agree with your statement in principle, but in practice, real-life is never that easy.
Let's take a non-controversial example. There is a persistent myth in Africa that having sex with a virgin can cure you of HIV. All the scientific evidence suggests this is not true, but the myth persists. Now, perpetuating the myth causes actual harm: (1) virgins get exploited and sometimes raped, (2) more people get HIV due to the sex act against previously uninfected people (3) people falsely think they are cured so go on to have more sex and spread HIV.
So what do you do about websites promoting this folk remedy? It's easy to say "free speech," but is it worth it to allow these kinds of myths to spread.
To be clear, you may think it is, and society as a whole may think it is as well. However, surely you can see there is an argument and how some people earnestly and without malicious intent think there should be some kind of prohibition against this kind of speech.
Now simply extend that reasoning to other more controversial topics.