Hate Promotion on the internet

The French Revolution and the enlightenment created ideas of Liberty, Freedom and Justice for all. Democratic governments are giving people a voice to be heard.


However, the internet is giving a voice to those that should not have one!

This Wednesday is the Jewish new yeah (רוש השנה) (Rosh Hashanah) so I thought about talking about the most loved talked about Jewish topic-anti-Semitism!


As many of you know I am Jewish, and as a Jew I pay attention to anti-semitism on the internet.

As you can imagine I am outraged with the ability that groups once condemned by society, ostracised with their extreme views, are finding a voice to network and more importantly are able to promote themselves and their message to the wider population.

A recent Facebook event "Kill a Jew Day" was able to exist for enough time to create a serious impact, and whilst Facebook did do the right thing and remove the event, the haters achieved their  goal of getting the publicity they desired.

Whilst, there has been a group created on Facebook to speak out against the disgusting event,  a simple search on Google reveals thousands of websites, blogs, and commentary, and whilst many speak out against such hate others promote the hate message.

The Jerusalem Post is just one place to read the full the story.

For the majority of people social media networks are a great place to stay in touch with the long lost relative, or that friend you met on a camp, or holiday, or even work colleges, many contacts that in a world without the internet would not exist.

So apart from wanting to highlight this issue, I wanted to ask a few questions as well.

Most agree that the internet is a great place to promote anything, whether it be a business, an event, or even an individual websites such as Google, Youtube, Ebay, Linkedin, Facebook, or just a website.

However, with the freedom of information comes this danger of hate groups, and while society and technology races forward we a left with a feeling that society is going just as quickly in the wrong direction to the dark ages.

Facebook to its credit quickly removed the event, however, anti-Semitic website such as Jewwatch are free* to spread their message, in fact Google in the past has been criticized that with a search of the word Jew prominent anti-Semitic websites rank highly on an organic search so much so that google was forced to defend itself.

However, Google has taken steps to remove this problem however, due to the rate such websites are created it is still possible for them to get through.

The problem is not just limited to the Jewish people in fact most minorities face this problem.

Racism is a fact of life, whilst, it is illegal in many countries including Australia, under the Racial Discrimination Act. It still very much so exists. The internet is probably the best medium for  racist messages to spread...and I can't see a way to really stop it other than vigilantes  and watch dog groups surfing the net and flagging the offending sites.

Is this the only solution of can you think of others?