Mark Zuckerberg was answering questions regarding Facebook’s efforts to protect personal information, monitor ‘fake news,’ and generally acting like an upstanding corporate citizen. He was pressed about refusing to take down posts that denied the Holocaust had ever occurred. In some of the posts quoted in the question, the language was clearly hateful and bigoted towards Jews. Zuckerberg, in typical liberal fashion, said he could not remove that speech because of “free speech issues.” He went on to say that he disagrees strongly with those views but that posts such as these can stimulate conversations that “need to had."

Clearly, to some of us, Zuckerberg is at the very least ignorant about many issues addressed in his comments. At worst, he is not very good at hiding his hypocrisy. Zuckerberg gets the blame for this situation for 2 reasons; first, it’s his company and he’s responsible for the actions taken by his company. Secondly, he has said repeatedly that he will be very involved in cleaning up hate speech, fake news, and the other problems facing his company.

Since this topic has been in the news, Zuckerberg has removed multiple posts quoting the Constitution of the United States as “hate speech." Yet, the posts denying the Holocaust that contained vile, hateful language are allowed to remain in order to stimulate intellectual conversations.

Additionally, many conservative news sources, organizations, or groups have had their posts identified as hate speech and removed. Many of the posts were reproductions of columns that were published in mainstream news sources or videos of broadcasts that aired on television or radio. There certainly wasn’t any vile language in any of those posts. Yet, I’ve seen many posts from liberal organizations that not only contained vile, hateful language, but also called for violence against conservatives, Christians, or other groups.

Zuckerberg claims Facebook is a platform for free speech while discussing his efforts to censor some of the speech that appears on his platform. Certainly, he can and should remove speech that is clearly hateful and serves no purpose other than to be hateful or promote hate/violence. But the choice is his and his alone.

Facebook is a private company, yes, I know it’s publicly traded, but it’s a private entity not related to any governmental body. As such, Zuckerberg does not have to allow any and all speech on Facebook. He can censor anyone he wants to censor. He can be the sole determiner of what is hate speech or not. Zuckerberg can set the standards for his business and then apply them. There are some laws that prevent his having complete freedom in this area, but essentially those laws are wrong and should be repealed.

The market will determine if Zuckerberg is biased or hypocritical in his standards and actions. The marketplace will decide if they like how he runs his business and react accordingly. We can either continue to use Facebook or we can find an alternative. His pocketbook is exactly what he pays attention to and that will foment change more effectively than any other action we can take.

Zuckerberg would do well to just come out and say what he believes and continue to censor the Facebook posts in the way he wants. He would also do well to understand how the Constitution applies to governmental entities as opposed to private entities. But then again, he did attend public school.