TechWag

: Image via CrunchBase

For worst or worst, Facebook has entered into another controversy that has ignited many well placed, and vocal people. Facebook allowed two groups to deny the holocaust on their site, and for good or bad, this has caused a firestorm of controversy for the company. The problem is that this is a symptom, and as a security engineer, I know what is on the internet, and it is not shiny shiny toys all the time.

There is no way that a reasonable person could think that the holocaust did not happen, there are too many movies, too many witnesses, too many books, and too many official government records from Nazi Germany. The idea though is that on the internet, one can find holocaust deniers everywhere, and not just the holocaust can be called into question. Turkey still denies it did anything to the Armenians, Bosnia and what is left of the former Yugoslavia still have to come to terms with what happened there in the 1990’s, we have Darfur, we have atrocities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and even amongst our allies in the middle east. We will not even speak of China, or breathe a word of Gitmo and extraordinary renditions. Yet these groups also exist on Facebook, indeed anywhere on the internet. We use the internet for all sorts of good, bad, and downright ugly.

Yet a vocal group from Techcrunch, Business week, to Brian Cuban, and many others have all taken Facebook to task for having these groups on their site. Why when there are so many things to deal with as we develop an internet that is a macrocosm of who we are as a global society. If you want a global society, we have to set norms, and Facebook is just one place of many to set that norm.

The issue goes far beyond just Facebook; it permeates the internet as much as it permeates print, TV, movies, and music. We have holocaust deniers as heads of state in Iran, as well as holocaust deniers as people you might work with. This is not so much about cleaning up Facebook alone, but social networking presents its own good, bad and ugly. Social networking helps us find support groups for all sorts of thinking and believing, from cults to slurpees, it is all there. Holocaust denial is but a symptom of the problem. We have yet to put any kind of societal norm on the internet, the internet is still everything goes. From child porn, to flogging videos of teenagers in Afghanistan on CNN, live suicides via streaming video, to bullying, to harassment and cyber bullying. Social networking can amplify this, bring it to the fore of the conversation, in a place where it is the glaring spotlight. We might not want it there, but the actions of the few in this case were correct, they are setting a societal norm for Facebook. Go this far but no further.

We do not have control over what people do, what they say, where they go, and what they view. The focus on Facebook is but a momentary issue, it is something to get worked up about, when the internet in general is a wonderful place to be, but carries with it all dangers, thrill and excitement of working in Times Square in the 1970’s. This is the reality, not an out of place group on Facebook, but the reality is what we are tolerating on the internet. We see this stuff every day, our kids stumble across this stuff every day, and we go to places that we would rather not go.

If we are to set up a global societal norm on the internet, then we need to do this. We need not the pseudo care of Facebook to clean this puppy up, but the concerted efforts of government, industry, ISP’s, and people to make this happen. Facebook is a glitch, it is a way to generate headlines over a very real topic and get worked up over an issue. There are no concrete solutions being provided on how to clean this puppy up, and unlikely there will be a concerted global standard for decency and behavior on the internet. We have fits and starts, but it has yet to mean anything.