Google and Facebook: ‘We can’t allow people to post hateful content’

TechCrunch – By RICHARD GRANT and TOMMY LEE.
12 May 2017 16:12:36 Google and Twitter are taking a page from Facebook’s playbook, promising that they will not tolerate hate speech online.
Speaking to TechCrunch’s Peter Kafka on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress trade show, Google’s chief operating officer Patrick Pichette told the panel that he and other executives “will not allow the people who are running the platform to post hate speech on the platform.”
“That is not something we would allow, and it’s something we don’t tolerate in any other way, including in any form,” Pichett said.
“So if you think that we can’t moderate the content that is coming in, well, it’s a very different set of circumstances.
I can tell you that for us that’s not something that we would support or tolerate.””
We’re not going to allow people, if they want to post a hateful piece of content, to post that content,” he continued.
“We can only block it.”
Pichette and the other execs said that while Facebook has blocked hate speech before, it does not block content based on its terms of service.
They said that Facebook “is trying to figure out a way to get around this.”
In an interview with The New York Times earlier this month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the company was facing criticism for its “lack of control” over its users.
He also said that he hopes to see a “more thoughtful approach” in the coming months.