June 26, 2015 will go down a very bad day in terrorism. Within hours, terrorist attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait left over 60 dead. Terrorist group Islamic State claimed responsibility for two of these attacks on Twitter.
To say this puts social media sites in a torn, uncomfortable position is the big understatement. A few days before, ISIS put a You Tube video of themselves carrying out several acts of mass murder. One hideous act included locking men up in a cage and lowering them in a swimming pool to drown to death. On one hand, versions of such monstrous acts would remain on You Tube. On the other hand, You Tube leaders declared they wouldn’t allow their medium to be a ?”distribution channel for this horrible, but very newsworthy, terrorist propaganda”. That’s the catch 22 facing social media executives today, and terrorist groups like ISIS know it. They even put up a You Tube video of themselves serving ice cream to children in Syria, as a recruiting tool. How do you walk the fine line between preventing terrorist from using social media as a recruitment tool and keeping the right to free speech Americans and many others around the world cherish?
This problem is by no means limited to the USA. In Europe, some countries order social media sites to block terrorist propaganda. In America, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved a bill requiring social media to report terrorist propaganda to federal authorities. I rarely say this, but I agree with the Senate. Like anything, free speech can be abused. Free speech should never be used as an excuse to glorify or promote murder, brutality, or torture of other human beings. And look at these guys who are exploiting free speech. ISIS and other terrorists don’t believe in freedom for anybody. Look at the way they treat anybody who doesn’t think or act like them. Why should we allow some psychopaths to hijack free speech from the rest of us?