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Community Corner

Where Does Free Speech End and Good Taste Begin?

There is a petition being circulated that asks Facebook to take down a page that has offensive language relating to the Sandy Hook shooting. So far, however, Facebook has not done so.

The First Amendment right to free speech is so often touted now that the true meaning has got lost somewhere in the translation. Simply put, it prohibits congress or the government from restricting free speech. However, it does not prevent an organization like Patch, or Facebook, from making rules of what it will or won’t allow to be “spoken” on it’s airwaves.

A petiton on Facebook at the moment is asking for an offensive post related to the Sandy Hook tragedy be taken down. The administrator of the page, which is named Going to MacDonalds for a salad roll is like going to a brothel for a hug, claims that someone else posted it while he was distracted. He says now his page has been restricted and he can’t remove it. But people aren't buying his explanation. By Thursday, more than 100,000 people had already signed the petition asking Facebook to remove the post.

The petition says that Facebook initially claimed that it can't remove it because it doesn’t violate Facebook's terms of use. However, Facebook has been known to remove postings that some people found offensive, such as postings by Navy Seals that were critical of the president.

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So is this a First Amendment issue or should Facebook take the offensive post down? Is keeping it up in the name of free speech a misinterpretation of what the First Amendment is all about?

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