(Thumbnail image from The Huffington Post)
“Let me give you some very practical tips. First of all, I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook. Because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life.” --Barack Obama, U.S. President (AP)
It seems someone didn’t take the president’s words seriously. A poll was posted on Facebook on Saturday asking, “Should Obama be Killed?” and now Secret Service is searching for the perpetrator.
The survey was taken down, but not before 700 of the site’s users responded to it. We are looking at how serious the media think this online controversy is, and if there should be more censorship on social networking sites.
ABC News correspondent Pierre Thomas says the government does not consider the poll itself dangerous.
“The poll was posted over the weekend and was taken down by Facebook by Monday, after the Secret Service notified the company, which was not aware of the survey. Authorities were not really concerned about an urgent threat to Mr. Obama, but wanted the poll taken down because it might inspire something ugly.”
Political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson disagrees, saying that the poll itself is part of a much bigger social problem. In an article on the Huffington Post, he states:
“At any other time and with any other president, the Facebook poll might be shrugged off as a sick joke. But this is not another time or another president. Obama has been the butt of every dig, insult, and knock sick minds could conjure up."
Contributor Bob Beckel tells FOX News the poll creator should be punished once he is found.
"This is the kind of garbage that's generated from the extreme right against Obama, and it's going way over the line. It's got to be stopped. Find him, prosecute him and put him in jail."
Boyce Watkins, a professor at Syracuse University, told CNN that the larger issues behind this poll cannot be ignored.
“This president gets more death threats than pretty much any president in recent history. So, if we really just focus on this issue and don’t focus on the broader problem, then we’re really going to miss the point because we have to realize that America’s a country that is sick with the disease of racism, and the disease of racism has its greatest impact on those who think they’ve been cured. So, I’m not so angry about this incident as much as I am about the environment that’s been created around our president.”
A Facebook spokesman told L.A. Times although they try to keep offensive material off their website, they also believe in freedom of speech.
“We take action by taking it down, by issuing a warning or by reporting it to law enforcement. At the same time, we want Facebook to be open to discuss ideas. We don't pre-approve postings."
Finally, The Rhode Show, a segment on FOX Providence in Rhode Island, sees censorship as important but impractical.
“I also think that there has to be something in place with Facebook, Twitter, and all these other things, where there has to be some sort of screening, and you can’t just throw whatever you think out on it."
So do you think social networks should enforce more regulation of content?
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