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So, for instance, on Facebook you can apparently create a group called “Death To Islam” or “F*ck Islam,” but not “F*ck Muslims.” Or you can say “F*ck Judaism,” but you can’t say “F*ck Jews.” Call me crazy but all of the above sound hateful to me. I fail to see the distinctions, but Facebook companies seem to think there is one. They have created their own private rules that somehow justify the existence of these groups on their sites.
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Some of the people who own and operate these companies are dear friends, so I ask them humbly to re-think their policies. I urge the executives of social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Myspace to consider that their platforms are powerful educators and motivators of our young people. As such, there is a social responsibility to not engage in semantic distinctions of hatred on their sites that have no practical application in the real world. These distinctions might seem minor in practice, but the effect they can have in the spreading of societal intolerance of others based on different religious beliefs is real.
Russell Simmons discusses Facebook’s extremely liberal interpretation of acceptable speech on their service.
I am a strong believer that network operators must consider the impact their service and their policies have on the people who use them beyond the confines of what buttons someone can click, and what messages appear in an update feed. Personally, I think promoting these groups - and that is exactly what Facebook is doing - is unconscionable.
As I’ve said before, I think every social network should have a sociologist and maybe a historian on staff so that seemingly innocuous design and policy decisions can be put into a real context. When you are redesigning the way people communicate and share information, you have an opportunity and an obligation to make sure you understand what sort of big picture, real world ramifications your code might have.
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Fact: every day at 7PM I have a robot email me and ask about my day. I hit reply and let it know. Later I’ll be able to reference such things.
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I did a pixel art version though just to be safe.
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“The other key disruptor is empathy. Probably every company would say they try to understand their customer — and that they’ve done the market...”
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Perfect from all angles.
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The funny thing is, no one’s really hiding the secret of how to make awesome online communities. Give people something cool to do and a way to talk...
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