Hi Everyone, Keep sharing. More important than ever. Facebook's latest attempts at removing certain 'hate speech' and 'fake news' groups may seem laudable on the surface. Don't be fooled though. It's just another attempt by Facebook to prevent the government from taking its proper responsibility to establish the basic rules and laws to govern our social media and protect our rights much as it does for any public commons. That is where the rules need to be made, and can be enforced. It should not be left up to the private owners of these platforms to decide what is or is not permissible. We have a first amendment protection and a rule of law that governs our behavior on the public commons and the government's authority to protect those rights. So should it be for social media as well.

The one difference that might need to be taken into account is the overarching spread and speed of social media. That is different than the various methods of speech and news in the real world. Like measles, things can get out of hand very fast. I would suggest, the answer lies not in censorship, but in filtering and restricting the rapid spread of messages when hate or violence or patently false information is involved. Perhaps all messages and links should be restricted to a certain limit, or require review before going beyond such limits. Perhaps at levels of, say, 50, 500, 5000 or above when sharing and linking should get additional review and scrutiny should be required, each level needing some approval to permit further distribution. As always, the most effective answer to bad messages, are education and good messages. That is the way democracy works best.

Again, share/email this petition as widely as you can.