For the record I get tired of it.  Tired of being the one who has to stick up for the worst the world can produce.  Tired of feeling sick to my stomach because I'm having to defend beliefs I feel are reprehensible. 

But here's the thing.  I continue to do it because I know emotionalism is the road to destruction.  If you allow yourself or  your society to just act according to how they feel eventually you get to the point where you're trampling over good people.  Because all good people have valid disagreements.  So while these movements might start out trying to get rid of bad people they end up paving a road to hell with their good intentions.

Which brings me to Bob Cuban's battle against Holocaust denial on Facebook...

It is undisputed that as a collective , Holocaust Deniers are overwhelmingly antisemitic.  One cannot be separated from the other.   They use a fringe, discredited historical theory as a pretext and rallying point to perpetrate and promote their message of hate using Facebook as  recruiting ground.   By allowing these groups whether they number 1 or 1000, Facebook is not promoting open discussion of  a controversial issue.  It is  promoting and encouraging hatred towards ethnic and religious groups, nothing more.

By claiming open discussion as the rationale for allowing these groups to exist, Facebook is playing games with semantics.  Facebook is taking form over substance to protect their imaginary subjective corporate line in the sand they have drawn.

Now there's almost no point in trying to tear apart Mr. Cuban's logic because, to be perfectly frank, there is none.  He's quoting his personal feelings about the topic (that Holocaust denial = Anti-Semitism) as fact with no proof to back that up.

(For the record, I think he's absolutely right but I can't prove it either which is sort of my point here)

So really what he's saying is "ban this group because I don't like them."  But as I said above that leads down a dangerous path.

The obvious counter argument to what I'm saying is that society has to have standards.  We as a majority feel that Holocaust denial is unacceptable so we as a majority should be allowed to censor it.  Not only "allowed to" but in fact obligated to censor it to prevent violence against Jews. 

But see that's where you run into the flaw of that theory.  We as a society have an obligation to stop violence against Jews but we can do that simply by outlawing the violence.  There is no upside to censoring thought.  In fact, just the opposite.   The end result of outlawing thought is you make it look more valid than it actually is.  You give the people trying to recruit others to their hateful agenda a rallying cry by making it look like the government is trying to hide something.

So how is this tech related?  Every industry has a heritage.  A set of values that it inherits from those who created the industry in the first place.  For businesses on the Internet that heritage is openness.  For better or worse the Internet is now the protector of free speech. 

Don't get me wrong, there will always be a place on the Internet for those who want to connect with like minded individuals.  Those sites should feel free to ban whoever and whatever they want.  But companies who claim "open discussion" as part of their value system need to set their personal biases aside when judging what is or is not appropriate discussion.

Addendum: I forgot to address one piece of Mr. Cuban's argument in that he claims Facebook should remove the group because hate speech is against the law in some of the countries that Facebook serves which means the groups are a violation of Facebook's Terms of Service.  This issue comes up every once in a while and my response is always the same "ToS agreements are to protect the company who writes them therefore it's within the company's rights to ignore them if they so choose".