Hate Speech

After visiting the Free Speech Museum's Hate Speech page, I learned that hate speech is actually protected under the First Amendment, something that totally surprised me. Hate speech includes harmful and offensive phrases, slurs, names, etc. that target a certain person or group based on various factors including their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, etc. Anyone is allowed to engage in hate speech since it falls under the First Amendment. It seems like hate speech is not regulated on the Web since I have heard of sites that are dedicated to express hate towards certain groups do exist. I think hate speech should be regulated and censored because it causes harm to others. Although we are entitled to freedom of speech, I think allowing these sites to exist promotes hatred towards others, which could possibly lead to people getting together to come up with more violent acts of hate, including physical harm or threats. I am a believer that if one has nothing nice to say, then it should not be said at all. Doing so would just cause more tension between the two parties. Although censoring hate speech does violate our constitutional right to freedom of speech, we live in a society where discrimination is prohibited. The way I see it, hate speech is just another form of discrimination. Other less formal ways of reducing hate speech may be through restricting hate speech so that it is not public. Perhaps we can encourage other alternatives like writing in a private journal rather than voicing hate speech through the public web.