Hate Speech, Free Speech, or a business decision?

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Many large social media channels are coming under fire for not being “tough on hate speech.”  Refer to this recent article in The Guardian – Face-off between MPs and social media giants over online hate speech.  In the US, while hate crimes are illegal, the constitution gives a great deal of latitude to hate speech except where it transcends into personal attacks and “fighting words.”   The Washington Post has a great piece on this outline the law and relevant statutes.

One embeddable commenting system, Disqus, is facing massive boycotts due to the fact that they power the commenting on Breitbart and many other website forums.  Is there an easy answer to this?  I’m sure there are two dissenting easy answers depending on where you stand.  Where this is no law or statute prohibiting hate speech in commenting systems and forums, the forum owners must define their own policies based on business impacts.  Additionally, vendors such as Disqus need to determine the potential impacts of who they do business with.

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