Facebook will begin removing Holocaust denial, after pressure from Jewish groups
Image by facebook
By Molly Boigon October 12, 2020
Facebook updated its hate speech policy to ban content that “denies or distorts” the Holocaust, the platform announced Monday.
“I’ve struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimizing or denying the horror of the Holocaust,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement on Facebook. “My own thinking has evolved as I’ve seen data showing an increase in anti-Semitic violence, as have our wider policies on hate speech.”
Facebook said its decision is related to growing antisemitism around the world and a recent survey that found that almost a quarter of American adults under the age of 39 believed that the Holocaust was a myth, that it was exaggerated or they weren’t sure.
Facebook has been a consistent home for Holocaust denial for years. A report from a think tank published in August found 36 Facebook groups, with hundreds of thousands of members, that actively posted Holocaust denial.
The report found that Facebook not only did not remove Holocaust-denying posts, but recommended them to people who had viewed similar content in the past.
Facebook has responded in recent weeks to pressure to work harder to combat hate speech on the platform. The most visible pressure has come from the Anti-Defamation League, which encouraged advertising boycotts against the platform over the summer. The World Jewish Congress has worked more closely with Facebook executives to try and shape their policies.
Facebook announced a new policy last week about banning QAnon accounts, but experts say there will be a delay in enforcement that could be harmful.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
