Facebook has recently come under attack for failing to enforce its own guidelines on hate speech and violent imagery.
Is it a website’s job to moderate the content users post, or should users have freedom to say what they want?
Is there a happy medium?
If so, how would you structure it?

I’ve only been back on Facebook for a short while.
I recently reactivated my account after a couple of years without it in order to find a friend, whose phone number I had lost.
I must say it is a nice way of keeping in touch with people that I might otherwise not contact, as I have very little spare time.
I can like or comment on their posts to let them know I haven’t forgotten them, without having to get drawn into long conversations. Other than that it’s really just full of annoying rubbish.

I was reading a post by a friend the day after we had a gruesome terrorist murder in London.
He was saying, in response to some pointless religious hatred, that spreading racial or religious hatred was not going to help the people of Britain or anywhere else. He was immediately assaulted with posts, accusing him of trying to justify terrorism, accompanied by some idiotic anti-Islamic taunts. This all degenerated into threats against mosques & I stopped reading out of sheer exasperation at how stupid people can be.

I read later in the day that some people making threats against Muslims or Islamic establishments on Facebook had been arrested. Out of curiosity I returned to re-read the comments & found that the whole conversation had been removed. I’m very glad that it was removed, even though my friend had been gallantly fighting his corner for justice, his good words were simply buried in offensive material from other users.

Does this mean that Facebook are at last taking responsibility for the content on their site or was this event so prominent, it happening in Europe, that they were just protecting themselves from legal action. I read only a while before that videos of be-headings did not breach their policies!!! Maybe that was because they happened in Asia & not in Europe or America.

Today the issue is some particularly vile & abusive material aimed at women. I cannot believe that Facebook allows this stuff to be published on their site. I am all for freedom of speech, belief & opinion but when material is so obviously designed to be nothing but 100% offensive, destructive & humiliating what is the point of actively supporting it. Which is what Facebook are doing by hosting it & what companies are doing by adding their adverts to it.

Freedom of Facebook