Enabling an international forum for racism and bigotry promotes those concepts. Many studies have proven that the principle of social proof holds in all cultural contexts. People determine what is correct by finding out what other people deem correct. (Lun, J. et al., 2007 "Why do I think what you think" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). In enabling a forum for debate over whether a proven and horrendous historical event happened, Facebook is actively the promoting denial of historical events and the atrocities associated with them. Perhaps if this was concerning a debate over whether or not the earth was flat, no one would be concerned, and no one would give credence to the purveyors. When it concerns the discrimination against an entire people, this is a completely different and morally profound matter. People base their actions on social evidence. In enabling an international audience to publically malign a specific group of people and historical events, Facebook is providing social proof that it is acceptable to behave this way and therefore creating more of this type of behavior in the world.

Forget lawyers, the experts that Facebook seem to have completely left out of the consultation loop are socio-psychologists would would tell them that their policy is directly promoting hatred. As a graduate student in media psychology, I can tell you that we should all be deeply concerned about the power of social networking to be the biggest generator of hatred and promoter of violence that the world has ever experienced. Everyone should get very educated about the many studies that have shown the devastating results of failing to marginalize purveyors of violence and biogtry, historical revisionism and group scape-goating.

This is not about free speech, this is about a private company and every advertiser on Facebook providing economic and technical support for hatred and bigotry.

What would the debate look like if it was concerning the denial slavery in the US and called African Americans monkeys, pigs and other racist epithets?