Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg believes the best way to fight hate over the Internet isn't with more hate, but with a "Like" attack.
Think of it as the online version of killing with kindness.
While participating in a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last Wednesday, Sandberg shared her insights on how to fight ISIS and other radical groups.
Sandberg recalls a recent push by users in Germany to "Like" the Facebook page of the National Democratic Party, which allegedly uses the social networking service as a means to spread prejudice.
"Rather than scream and protest, they got 100,000 people to Like the page, who did not Like the page and put messages of tolerance on the page, so when you got to the page, it changed the content and what was a page filled with hatred and intolerance was then tolerance and messages of hope," says Sandberg.
Similarly, Facebook users can use the same approach when dealing with recruitment drives made by ISIS via social media.
"The best thing to speak against recruitment by ISIS are the voices of people who were recruited by ISIS, understand what the true experience is, have escaped and have come back to tell the truth ... counter-speech to the speech that is perpetuating hate we think by far is the best answer," says Sandberg.
Sandberg's remarks come amidst recent campaigns started by the social network and the U.S. government to combat terrorism and hatred online.
Earlier in January, for instance, administration officials met with Facebook and various other U.S. technology companies to talk about ways to curb the communication of extremist groups via social media.
Facebook is also joining forces with the Obama administration in Peer to Peer: Challenging Extremism, an initiative that urges college students to start anti-terrorism movements and share them on social networking sites.
While Silicon Valley and the U.S. government agree that there is a need to fight Islamic extremism efforts through the Internet, technology leaders have been reluctant in the past to police user-generated content, mainly because of America's views on free speech.
Sandberg's comments, however, seem to imply that Facebook's stance regarding this may have changed.
