Last week Facebook – you know what it is if you’re reading this on-line – agreed to take down pages set up by Holocaust deniers, including ones called “Holocaust is a Holohoax” and “Holocaust: A Series of Lies.” As attorney Brian Cuban pointed out, Facebook has in the past removed groups based on complaints. “There is no First Amendment right to free speech in the private realm,” he told the Cable News Network. Because of that, he said, this is not a freedom-of-speech issue. Rather, Facebook can set the standard to which it wants to adhere.

That’s true. But it’s also dangerous. That is because this drives the deniers to seek yet more creative ways to spread their drivel. Rather, these sites must be monitored and combated. It is unlikely that banning them will help.

So while Facebook finally agreed to block the sites, I wish they had not done so.

I know a lot of people don’t agree and think that such vicious hate should be kept out of the public realm. Yes, I know that the journalist in me is sometimes too detached from the raw emotions of modern Jewish trauma. Still, one cannot hide from the technology revolution and the new challenges it will continually create.

Rather, incorporating strategies on confronting such issues must now be the part of Jewish defense leagues such as the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (to which the Baltimore Jewish Council belongs), the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress.

But censoring hate? I’d rather fight it than force it underground.

Welcome to the social networking revolution.

—clip—
So while Facebook finally agreed to block the sights, I wish they had not done so.
—clip—
I take it that should be “sites” not “sights”?