Facebook needs to factor in the resulting PR, so the answer with a business twist is YES. But, from a sociological perspective, I guess the answer would be: Not immediately, this is valuable data!!! These are social health thermometers... especially useful if you can cross reference it with rich demographics ( which is what Facebook is all about ). I wonder how many things these guy already know about Humanity 2.0. - Aldo Bucchi from FriendFeed MT Plugin

@Tim "I'm glad they shut it down. Incitation to hate, and racial behavior is nowhere to be tolerated, even in a free-speech driven world." Absolutely, but herein lies the conundrum. If you control the medium you silence the symptoms. How can you diagnose the patient in the dark? With no diagnose there is hardly any possible treatment. OTOH, it could be the case where not treating the symptoms can also be a bad idea. In this case, it might spark a revolt or spread ill perspectives and distorted facts to virgin minds. Complex situation! Nice pick for debate Marshall IMHO, this incident lies within one of the areas that http://webscience.org/ should be looking into. You should ping them ;) - Aldo Bucchi from FriendFeed MT Plugin