On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Facebook and Twitter and Microsoft have now decided to comply with the European Union's desire to crack down on terrorist communications.

They vowed to proactively shut down so-called hate speech.

Here's the report.

Beyond national laws that criminalize hate speech, there's a need to ensure such activity by Internet users is expeditiously reviewed by online intermediaries and social media platforms upon receipt of a valid notification in an appropriate time frame.

The companies in the European Commission said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

Twitter's head of public policy for Europe, Karen White said we remain committed to letting the tweets flow.

However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate. Now, first things first. Okay, these are private companies. They have the right to decide in the marketplace what sort of speech they wish to provide a forum. That said, they don't have a right to commit fraud. They can't tell people that they're for free speech and then reverse themselves by following certain politically correct rules about speech.

The distinction between, quote, freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate

is not as clear as White wants to make it. For example, a French Jewish group sued,

Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and did so after notifying them about hate speech

that they said promoted racism, homophobia, or anti-Semitism. And this begs two questions.

First, who sets the standard of what promotes racism, homophobia, or anti-Semitism? Second,

does all such speech actually constitute a threat to anyone? The use of the term hate speech

tends to gloss over these very

serious questions. Monica Bickert, who runs global policy management at Facebook, she said,

there's no place for hate speech on Facebook, but is it hate speech to cite Leviticus 1822 about

homosexuality? Is it hate speech to say that Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by the cops in

Ferguson, was a thug? According to the left, probably. Is it hate speech to say that Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by the cops in Ferguson, was a thug?

According to the left, probably. Is it hate speech to say that men can't become women and women can't become men? Well, probably according to the left, more importantly, just because you don't

like particular speech, that doesn't make the speech dangerous. There's a lot of speech people

deem hateful that doesn't cross the line between being offensive and incitement to violence.

White conflates conduct that incites violence and hate.

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