Denying a platform for hate speech works

Some of America’s social media giants are finally admitting they have a hatespeech problem. But others remain in denial.

On Jan. 25, YouTube announced that it would make changes to the way its algorithms suggest content to users to exclude “borderline content” — namely far-right conspiracy theory videos that YouTube has been repeatedly criticized for highlighting.

Meanwhile, Facebook remains at the center of controversy over its role as a major distribution network for the spread of right-wing propaganda around the world . “Fake news” spread on Facebook was a key factor in Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential elections in the United States. WhatsApp, a Facebookowned messaging service, was similarly crucial in the election campaign of Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro in 2017. Facebook was even used by the ruling regime in Myanmar to stir hatred against the Rohingya people in a social media campaign that spanned years and ultimately led to genocide.

Part of the problem is that Facebook is effectively in denial about what constitutes hate speech. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went so far as to suggest last summer that he would not take down posts that deny the Holocaust occurred — this, despite Facebook literally employing an army of content moderators who are, in theory, supposed to police such content.

Zuckerberg later apologized for his comments, but his blithe dismissal of removing Holocaust deniers from his platform — as well as Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg’s commissioning of research claiming to show the company’s critics are financed by George Soros, which has shades of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, show that Facebook has a crisis on its hands. The company’s recent stock surge has for the moment papered over these concerns (at least as far as investors are concerned), but the core malady remains.

What can Facebook do? The same thing YouTube has done — place limits on the reach of hate speech and propaganda videos on its platform.

There is, of course, a real danger in a private monopoly setting the boundaries of free speech. But there is a way forward that restricts hate speech in both a thoughtful and democratic fashion. It means taking seriously the well-documented concerns of Facebook users and employees over hate speech. It also means taking seriously the recommendations of groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which partnered with several other organizations last October to issue a report with recommendations on how to curb online hate speech.

There is an example from the past that shows how serious engagement with concerned users can solve the problem of hate speech: through the rise and fall of the American Mercury, the most important far-right magazine in the 1950s.

The Mercury, founded as a literary magazine by H.L. Mencken in the 1920s, was purchased by right-wing arms manufacturer Russell Maguire in 1952, who quickly turned it toward his brand of politics. Maguire, a ferocious anti-communist, was an avid supporter of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Gen. Douglas MacArthur. He was also a pronounced antiSemite, and under his ownership, the Mercury began publishing increasingly explicit anti-Semitic content.

But in 1954 Maguire’s Mercury ran into a significant obstacle. The American News Company, the major distributor of magazines to newsstands in the United States, refused to handle any more editions of the Mercury, citing the anti-Semitic content of the magazine.

American News was in fact a platform monopoly, not entirely dissimilar to Facebook today. It serviced 95,000 local news dealers in the United States as well as directly owning newsstands, restaurants, coffee shops, book shops, drug stores and dozens of other retail outlets. With Maguire’s magazine effectively barred from newsstands, readership plummeted.

Maguire reacted in a way that should be familiar today: He framed his hate speech as a free speech issue. “Don’t I have the right … to speak out about what I know? About what I believe? … We are not yet a Zionist-controlled Communist, or Fascist, State!”

American News was broken up by federal regulators under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1957, but even this did not change the Mercury’s fortunes. Maguire was told by one of American News’ competitors that individual vendors were pulling the magazine from the shelves. Lawrence Spivak, the host of “Meet the Press,” related that in March 1960 he saw a customer ask a newsstand agent why he was selling the Mercury, an anti-Semitic rag. “Surprised, the dealer thumbed through the magazine. Then, silently, he took the entire stack of Mercurys off the stand.”

This was not simply a company restricting speech at the behest of its CEO; rather, the Mercury was pulled because of the unwillingness of individual vendors to sell the magazine because they found the content to be objectionable . What the media distribution companies did was to take the concerns of their employees and clients about hate speech seriously. Walsh is a candidate for a doctorate in the history department at Princeton University. His dissertation is on the far right and the origins of modern conservatism.”