"The View" debated Facebook's ban on Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones and other controversial figures -- and they found only one, possibly surprising defender.
Jones and his InfoWars outlet had been banned from the social media giant since August, but the company banned him Thursday from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, along with the Nation of Islam founder and a handful of right-wing media personalities.
"Facebook has taken the tack because they're a private company and they can monitor their own content, they decided to do this," said co-host Sunny Hostin. "I disagree, certainly, with all those, the platforms those people that have been banned have, but it makes me uncomfortable that you have this private organization being able to take away the speech of private individuals. There's something about it that makes me, makes the lawyer in my uncomfortable."
Guest host Ana Navarro had no problem with the bans.
"I have no issue with it at all," Navarro said. "I want them shut down, silenced, muted -- I think they're horrible for our society. The First Amendment article is powerful, it's so unique to America, but it's not unlimited, it's not unrestricted. In law school you learn about the screaming fire in a crowded theater. If it's something that endangers people, if it's something that will end up hurting people, there are restrictions."
Co-host Joy Behar agreed there was a slippery slope argument to make, saying she could imagine conservatives calling to ban Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who co-host Meghan McCain has accused repeatedly of anti-Semitism, but Hostin said social media was an invaluable resource to many.
"If you look at the stats, 68 percent of adults say they occasionally get their news on social media, 67 percent of Facebook users get their news on Facebook," Hostin said. "It's become an invaluable source for the majority of Americans. To have a private company be able to exclude certain Americans from that platform, there's just something that makes me extremely uncomfortable with it, even though I disagree."
McCain said that seemed like an argument against Facebook's power.
"Is that an anti-trust argument that they're so big and they have so much power?" McCain said. "Is that an argument they're too big?"
"There's a lot of questions that have been pushed at Mark Zuckerberg," she added."My question is what are you doing about the radicalization of home-grown terrorists. He said if someone is trying to spread terrorist propagandas we build systems for that. That's fine, except, as we talked about earlier in the segment, in New Zealand the shooter was able to show the live massacre while it was happening -- clearly it's not good enough. My problem is the radicalization of home-grown terrorist here, and also people who are being radicalized by ISIS and using American platforms."
