(Via Techdirt.)

Shocking News: Communication Tools Don’t Discriminate: “In response to an article about how ‘Web 2.0 gives new tools to hate groups’ I was tempted to write an entire post, mimicking the original, except changing every instance of ‘hate’ to something positive. Yes, blogs and social networks can and are being used by hate groups. But they’re also being used to combat ignorance and hate. They’re just communication tools, and the fact that hate groups use them (as well as anti-ignorance groups) is hardly surprising. But rather than creating some moral panic about hate groups using these tools, why not encourage more people to use such tools to combat ignorance and hate? Instead, we get a bunch of supposed ‘experts’ talking about how these uses need to be shut down. That does nothing productive. It just makes the hate group members feel even more angry and persecuted, which just fuels the hate. The solution is to educate — and (oh, look at that!) web 2.0 provides some pretty good tools for spreading knowledge and fighting ignorance.