Hate speech will not be tolerated by Facebook and they are making sure everybody knows it.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – Mark Zuckerberg’s company believes in fighting fire with a hug. The social media mogul has already announced that hate speech will not be tolerated by Facebook, and they have started active campaigns that post positive messages to hate groups. The counter-propaganda is apparently effective.
Because it is difficult to track down every Facebook page or profile that is used to disseminate propaganda and shut it down. But the most difficult thing is not finding the pages or the profiles, but making sure that the person behind doesn’t create new ones after the old ones are deleted.
As we already know, hate speech will not be tolerated by Facebook, so the company’s chiefs had to find a solution to battle the negative messages that were pouring from some extremist groups. The solution was a rather ingenious one.
The social media company decided to battle all of the negative posts with likes and positive messages. They believe that the only way of making the terrorists feel like they’ve lost the on-line battle is to show them how many people think happy thoughts.
Violence cannot be treated with violence because it will spawn more negativity, destructive behavior and hate. The terrorists work with hate and violence on a daily basis so they are not moved by actions like a deleted Facebook page or people telling them that they are wrong and they should stop.
You can’t out speak a terrorist when it comes to violence. But you can make him feel confused and eventually force him to surrender if the only thing you do is talk to him about peace, love and unity.
That is the idea behind Facebook’s latest struggles against on-line terrorist propaganda. The company’s operating officer in chief, Sheryl Sandberg gave the example of active campaigns that post messages of hope and tolerance to pages of extreme members of the Islamic State.
She also gave the example of a successful experiment where a Facebook page created by a group of Neo-Nazis was “assaulted” with positive messages and likes until the creators of the page gave up on their own. If their account would have been deleted, they would have just made another one. Facebook is trying to avoid that vicious circle.
Hate speech will not be tolerated by Facebook and in order to fulfill that promise the company partnered up with the State Department and launched several competitions in 45 different college classes from around the world. The participants were provided a $2000 budget and ad credits worth of $200.
Another experiment that brought encouraging results took place last year. Facebook allowed a couple of extremist groups’ former members to create some fake accounts and contact the current members of the organization.
Hate speech will not be tolerated by Facebook and the company is doing everything in its power to keep that promise.
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