It could also be argued the other way around: businesses put very little long term thought into how their systems would be used. One of the consequences is that their systems can be manipulated to propagate hate speech at a scale that would not be possible otherwise.
Now I'm not pretending that this is a new problem. It existed in the days of BBSes. It existed in the days of print. The list could go on. This should be been seen as forewarning. Doubtlessly, newspapers always received letters to the editor containing hate speech. Very few of them would be published, borderline cases may be published with additional commentary. It would take a very special publication to publish hate speech because it would affect their reputation. Yet they moved to the online world and opened the floodgates with "comments" that received little if any review before publication. There is a strong incentive for people to misuse this privilege against the best interests of the publisher since they immediately gain wide exposure. That is for a service that has a strong incentive to pay heed to what they publish, even in the digital world.
This short term mentality, coupled with the immediacy and global scope of the internet, resulted in certain parties using the Internet as a propaganda machine for speech that is detrimental to society and even the services that permit it. It is difficult to reign in short of shuttering the outlets for publication or giving them strong incentives to invest the resources into combating it.
Now I'm not pretending that this is a new problem. It existed in the days of BBSes. It existed in the days of print. The list could go on. This should be been seen as forewarning. Doubtlessly, newspapers always received letters to the editor containing hate speech. Very few of them would be published, borderline cases may be published with additional commentary. It would take a very special publication to publish hate speech because it would affect their reputation. Yet they moved to the online world and opened the floodgates with "comments" that received little if any review before publication. There is a strong incentive for people to misuse this privilege against the best interests of the publisher since they immediately gain wide exposure. That is for a service that has a strong incentive to pay heed to what they publish, even in the digital world.
This short term mentality, coupled with the immediacy and global scope of the internet, resulted in certain parties using the Internet as a propaganda machine for speech that is detrimental to society and even the services that permit it. It is difficult to reign in short of shuttering the outlets for publication or giving them strong incentives to invest the resources into combating it.