Is hate speech really hate speech?
BY: JACK JURSNICH
Opinions Editor
Recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a statement about free speech policies on his platform, and he explained that Facebook has been unfair to many of its users by banning them and removing their posts unnecessarily. During the 2020 pandemic, leaks came out about the Biden administration pressuring social media sites like Facebook to take down certain COVID-related posts, and Zuckerberg has made many statements now confirming this to be true. However, now that Zuckerberg has taken steps to change his policies, many people are worried that Facebook will be the new hub for hate speech.
People already trash on Elon Musk’s Twitter/X, claiming that hate speech is far beyond prevalent there, but funny enough, I never seem to find this hate speech that people are talking about. Though just like the rest of the Internet, I bet you I can find something I don’t like if I look hard enough.
This is the point I want to make, that people will find things to hate about even if there is no real reason to hate it. I think when people call something ‘hate speech’ they really mean that they just don’t like it. You can replace that phrase with the word ‘rude’ and it would all mean the same thing. I get people don’t want to hear things they don’t like, but such is life. Of course, someone shouldn’t be forced to listen to language they don’t want to hear, but someone shouldn’t be forced to shut up just because some person said it was ‘hate speech’.
Oftentimes, these people calling ‘hate speech’ have the option to walk away, yet they stay for no real reason and make things worse. So, it makes me think that this person isn’t calling it for what it is, and they’re just calling things ‘hate speech’ because they have no better defense. They can’t reason because they don’t want to reason, otherwise they’d walk away or talk things out in good faith.
Mainly online do I see these things happen, where someone will make a post and it’ll get taken down because someone flagged it for ‘hate speech’. Never are these posts featuring anything illegal, it’s usually something innocent like a meme, but they get taken down anyway. The people who call out ‘hate speech’ might be happy about this, but in my eyes, it just looks like the policies of the website are being catered towards a certain bias.
The whole thing becomes completely unfair when speech policies are abused like this. Why should I trust a platform whose policies favor the types of people who can’t take a joke or reason with other perspectives? I’m not saying the policy should favor me, all I’m saying is that it should be equal all around; but also, I think people need to understand that claiming ‘hate speech’ willy-nilly is not constructive but destructive to any attempt at equality.
So for my ‘hate speech’ crowd, these new Facebook policies aren’t the end of the world, rather they’re allowing the rest of the world to speak up. Try to understand that calling things out for ‘hate speech’ isn’t doing the good that a lot of people think it’s doing. ‘Hate speech’ is just like any form of free speech, but it’s only considered a problem when it’s used to harass people.
