When I was in high school, I got in a lot of debates with people for the idea that Nazis and the KKK shouldn't be allowed to exist and say whatever they want; that being a Nazi or KKK should be illegal. Everyone told me, "But you can't infringe on their right to free speech! It's a slippery slope! Where do you draw the line?"
It's not a slippery slope and it's an easy line to draw. It's already illegal to shout "fire" in a crowded area if there's no fire. In some states, hate speech is illegal when it's attempting to incite violence.
In a perfect world, we don't need laws to make racism illegal. In a slightly less perfect world, we could pass those laws and everything would work out and all the problems would just be solved over time.
But in our world, I think it's important to allow violent people to make threats online.
Allowing people to make violent threats to masses of people through social media allows the police, FBI, NSA, etc. to target them. Then the potentially violent person can either be monitored or arrested, launching an investigation.
The official website for the FBI made a post recently to tell people (primarily students) that it is a federal crime to make a public threat over text or social media. You can find it on their site here. They do take it seriously, but mention that investigating every threat is a waste of resources since most of them are empty threats.
An article from The Guardian published the results from a survey asking if social media should have better regulations for social media. It's almost neck and neck with 49% of people supporting better regulations and 51% of people opposing them.
There are other issues with unregulated social media regarding the Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election and while I'm in favor of that, I don't think regulations should be imposed regarding hate speech.
Of course, there are deeper issues regarding keeping people from reaching the point of committing acts of violence: better education to promote tolerance and peace, better mental health care, and as a last ditch effort, gun control laws.
It's important to continue finding better solutions to these issues, but in the mean time, report threats of violence to the authorities. Threats are being taken more seriously now than ever before.
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