Artemis's Blog

Reuters did a story the other day on how Hate Goes Viral On Social Network Sites, presenting an argument that social media help promote hate and help hate groups flourish, according to a report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, something that needs be contained by the social networking sites themselves. The report argues that “over 10,000 problematic Web sites, social networking groups, portals, blogs, chat rooms, videos and hate games on the Internet which promote racial violence, anti-semitism, homophobia, hate music and terrorism.” Even though that might be the case (even though talking about terrorism is taking it to the extreme), you can’t blame social media for enforcing this behavior, nor can you ask social media and social networking sites to try and control such context by eliminating it. What revolutionized the notion of social media and what Web2.0 is all about, is the fact that this is not a controlled environment,but instead an environment where people can express themselves freely and build a community around their common interests. Now, I absolutely disagree with people hating other people just because they are different to the degree where they want to eliminate them, but I’m afraid that this is a case where you have to take the bad with the good and let the social media landscape slowly weed out or naturally contain such groups that are potentially harmful to others.

Also, think of it this way, wouldn’t you prefer having such haters venting and consuming their anger in front of a computer screen rather than in the streets onto real life people who have done nothing to deserve such a hateful behavior?