A Holy War Wages on Facebook
While MySpace is quickly devolving into a cesspool of porn spam and error messages, Facebook is becoming the face of modern protest -- good or bad. First it was at the center of a controversy over Satan worshippers. Then consumers pirated Wal-Mart's page on the site to revolt against the company's business practices. Students recently used Facebook to successfully protest against unwanted bank fees, and just last week the site found itself embroiled in an uprising over a ban on breast-feeding photos. Now, another battle is brewing on the social networking site, this time surrounding Islam. An anti-Islamic group (with a profane name we won't quote here) has formed on Facebook with the following purpose: "The Quran contains many lies and threats. Islam is false, no god exists, and someone should say that loud and clear." At last count, the group had more than 750 members.
This, of course, has resulted in the creation of a number of anti-anti-Islamic groups, including one in which every member who joined it pledged it would quit Facebook if the anti-Islamic group in question wasn't taken offline. The creator of the anti-Islam group, who goes by the name Variable, denies that his group is hate speech and is claiming that his attack on the religion is covered by his right to free speech. However, he goes on to state that the anti-anti-Islamic groups that formed are hate speech because they are attacking him personally.
The question now is what Facebook will do. The inflammatory group was temporarily removed earlier this week, but was reinstated shortly afterward. As of this morning the group again can no longer be found on any of Facebook's lists, meaning that it may have been deleted for good. Facebook certainly has the right to delete any content it wants, but the potential fallout of trying to act as a censor could stir up more problems than it would solve.
From 'The New York Times'
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
A said 9:04PM on 1-23-2008
Whenth founders of this country wrote the freedom of speech clause into the Constitution, it was to prohibit the government from jailing people who did not agree with what was going on. Now people throw up "freedom of speech" whenever they want to spew filth or hate and incite anger. People that claim free speech know what they are doing is against the norm but they are grabbing for attention. I'm sure if our forefathers had seen what their freedom of speech amendment has come to, they would choose to not include it.
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Leah said 3:25PM on 1-14-2008
If you don't like the group don't join the group it's as simple as that, they can't take away our right of free speech. Of course there are going to be things that people don't agree with, but if it's something that's pretty harmless, like a facebook group, which no one is forced to even look at, then just let it be
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