On June 18th I attended  the Simon Wiesenthal Center news conference announcing the launch of their CD Rom Report ,“Facebook, YouTube +: How Social Media Outlets Impact Digital Terrorism and Hate”.(You can download the report on their site)  It was held at the Museum Of Tolerance.

I was honored to be invited to attend by Rabbi Abraham Cooper.  I was more honored and quite frankly stunned to find out when I arrived that I was one of the featured speakers at the news conference along with Rabbi Cooper and Facebook VP Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy, Elliot Schrage in what was almost a short form town hall style event attended by several student  and law enforcement groups as well as television and press media.

After an extremely enlightening and disturbing presentation on the proliferation of online hate groups from Rabbi Cooper, I spoke about my efforts to convince Facebook to remove groups promoting Holocaust Denial from their site.  I lead off with the following question to the audience:

“How many of you are of the opinion that as long as you do not threaten violence against someone(threatening to kill the President), you have a 1st Amendment right to say what you want on Facebook, Myspace, Youtube etc?”

About 50 percent of the people who said they used Facebook raised their hands.  It was not a shocking number.  It drove home what I have already learned in this debate.  Many in the general public may not know what the 1st amendment says or even understand its legal application.  Those same individuals however have a strong belief that the 1st amendment is a fundamental right within the realm of their daily lives and activities regardless of the context.  They believe that as long as they are not engaging in illegal activity with their speech, the only barriers to what can be discussed in the private or public realm are their own sense of common decency and good taste. I  went on to explain that there is no 1st Amendment protection and that their rights are controlled by the contractual TOS of these sites.

Next up was Mr. Schrage.  Like all of the executives at Facebook, he has an impressive background.  He holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.  His employment background is no less impressive.  He joined Facebook from Google, where he was the Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs.

My Schrage started off his talk by saying: “I feel like I am representing the internet”

Some people may find that statement a bit on the arrogant side and at first I did as well.  Upon reflection however, I think that he was right on the money.

While Facebook has 200 million active users, the number of people that it influences through the ideas shared and then through users sharing those ideas in the open internet and the brick and mortar world is much larger.  If the sphere of Facebook influence could be quantified in that context  I suspect the numbers would be staggering.

Three years ago it was MySpace.  In 2009, Elliot is right. He is representing the internet.  That is an awesome responsibility.  A responsibility  that for better or worse Facebook has gotten itself in the business of even if it is not reflected in their corporate mission statement.

During the news conference there was a  re-occurring theme was that if Facebook were to remove Holocaust Denial groups that did not contain expressions of “direct hatred“  it would open up the flood gates to massive claims related to just about everything and anything a user felt subjectively objectionable.  I also heard the two words I love to hear on Law And Order.  What I was proposing was a “slippery slope”.

The point I took from his presentation was that Facebook does not want to be in the business of making subjective determinations of what constitutes hate speech outside of the certainly in its definition of “direct-hate.”  Facebook wants objective certainty when making such determinations.  A certainty much like the standard they come up with their “nipple rule” in the breastfeeding controversy.

If a nipple is showing it violates Facebook TOS.  That is true even though such a picture would in fact be protected under traditional 1st Amendment principals. It  seems it is more important to a degree that Facebook have a clear enforceable guideline than they bend to free speech complaints.  Sounds familiar does it not?  I am not saying that is a bad thing.

At least Facebook is striving for consistency. They want clear logical objective guidelines in evaluating hate speech.  I have no problem with that.  No corporation can effectively function without such standards.  Unfortunately hatred is rarely subject to logical analysis.   My issue is that not with the objective standards but with the criteria used in achieving those standards. I believe that those criteria should be  open to discussion and be flexible to the requirements of a society that Facebook is a direct reflection of.

I was bothered by one element of Mr. Schrage’s presentation. There was a point in his presentation where I perceived he was attempting to minimize Holocaust Denial Groups in relation to the relatively small membership base of the groups.  IF this was his intent, I believe it is in direct contradiction to the “direct-hate standard he espoused.  If a group is removable  because it promotes direct hatred or violence, I suspect it would be removed whether it contained 1 member or 1000 members.  The  “virility of the hate“  would not be a factor.

So what about Holocaust Denial?

The problem with the mere fact of “Denying The Holocaust”  or in other types of content Facebook considers “subjective hate speech” is that according to Facebook there can be no objective certainty.  Or can there?  Is the mere fact of Denying The Holocaust so subjective in meaning that it is impossible to achieve the standard of certainty and ease of decision that Facebook strives for?

For example  I think the group HOLOHOAX is an an pretext to bring those together who hate Jews.  In my mind it constitutes a hate group.  Facebook disagrees.  They feel it falls within the category of doing nothing more than “deny the holocaust” which is not “direct hate” It appears that their position is that the two words if anything, may carry only a “inference of hate” or as I will use the term “inferential hate” There lies the fundamental difference on these issues. The objective speech classification and the criteria used to get there.

Let’s say, hypothetically,  there is  another group entitled  “ Did 6 Million Really Die?”  It however consists of   MIT mathematicians actually trying to count the number of those murdered.  They think its a few less or a few more than historically reported.   A technical denial of the Holocaust?  Yes.  An expression of direct hate or any hate at all?  Maybe not.  Do you ban that group as well?  If you need to have an objective standard the answer has to be yes.

Compare that to a group that pops up entitled “I Hate Jews” or “I Hate Muslims”.  Under Facebook’s current  standards as I understand them, that would be expression of direct hate and would be subject to removal as a TOS violation.

Compare that to a group entitled “I Hate Israel” or  “Israel Sucks“ or “I Hate Palestine“ .  Someone at Facebook can correct me if I am wrong but based on what I heard at the news conference these are NOT considered direct expressions of hate under current Facebook TOS.  Such groups would therefore NOT be removed.

What if you changed the “ I Hate Israel” to “I Hate Israelis”? Have we know gone from inferential to direct?   A non-TOS violation to removable content?  Is direct hatred really that semantic?

Going even further, how do the group discussion comments affect the direct vs. inferential analysis?  If the title is only inferential but there are direct expressions of hate in the discussion comments, is the group therefore an expression of direct hatred and a TOS violation or do only the comments go?   How many “direct hate” comments does it take for a group to be classified as a TOS violation?

As you can see, even with a concrete objective standard of “direct hate” a person could play these semantic games all day achieving a different TOS result with a minor change to one word.  A daunting task for Facebook to get its corporate hands around.

It appears that under Facebook’s current TOS, “Direct Hatred” to be a TOS violation must be specifically,  NOT inferentially directed at a person or group of people.  If I am wrong about this I encourage someone at Facebook to correct me.

I still believe that  it is possible to come to come up with an objective standard on what Holocaust Denial as hate entails and enforce it.  What is needed to move towards this is some transparency from Facebook with regards to its “thought process’ in these matters.

The moral and legal context of either free speech or hate speech is not historically static. What was not considered hate speech 100 years ago, 50 years ago or 10 years ago may now be looked on as such just as expressions that may have once been considered hate speech are now considered protected in the Constitutional realm (if we are going to use the Constitution as setting the tone)  What we consider hate speech or protected speech may look radically different 100 years from now even within the framework of our Constitution.

Companies such as Facebook which have taken on the entrepreneurial based task of encouraging the exchange of ideas and speech that can morph with the norms of history and influence millions have an obligation to constantly re-evaluate where their internal standards and norms fit with historical trends and imperatives.  Any one who sat in on Rabbi Cooper’s online hate presentation and who simply watches the news knows that the trends and imperatives are changing for the worse right before our eyes.

One may say ” Why should they worry about it?”  ” Facebook is not the gatekeeper of social norms or the internet.”  “Hate starts at home, not within the Facebook community.”

That very well may bet true, but when you have the current crown  of “representing the internet”  You need to understand and be sensitive to the needs of the masses you are representing even if it involves making decisions that may seem slippery at the time but in the context of evolving history and online hate, they are the right decisions to make.

In the end its really not a slippery slope at all.  Why?  Where does the slope begin and end?  Wherever Facebook says it does.