Want Facebook to Censor Speech? Be Careful What You Wish For
The only figure as capable as Donald Trump of spinning up an instant and frantic media cycle these days is Mark Zuckerberg, whose ubiquitous company can’t manage not to trend on its own platform.
This time the trigger was a long and enlightening interview with the probing Kara Swisher, in which Zuckerberg defended Facebook’s refusal to censor Holocaust deniers. His full-throated defense of free speech triggered a tizzy of debate among journalists—many of whom were rather less enthused with the idea of granting anti-Semites a globe-spanning platform.
This tangled and expansive Facebook free-speech debate actually comes down to one core issue: There are two definitions of “hate speech,” one legal and the other more vernacular. Which one we accept is the question.
