When the Auschwitz Memorial complains about tweets from Holocaust deniers, Twitter shrugs
Twitter won’t sanction users who spread hate. At the same time, Musk says he’s removing a feature that lets users block harassers
Elon Musk on June 16, 2023. The tech billionaire is fighting accusations that his social media platform, X, coddles antisemites and that he has personally trafficked in antisemitism. Photo by Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images
By Beth Harpaz August 21, 2023
The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum can’t get Twitter to sanction Holocaust deniers who tweet vitriolic, antisemitic messages.
Officials at the museum are also worried about Elon Musk’s plan to eliminate a feature that lets users block accounts. If that feature disappears, the museum and anyone else experiencing harassment won’t be able to stop those accounts from tweeting at them or about them.
The museum reported an account, @AngeleLave51660, for posting a black-and-white photo of a child with a cartoon of a hook-nosed man with gold coins and a prayer shawl, saying, “I’ll make trillions off this fairytale!”
Using a function on the platform, the museum reported the post as violating Twitter policy. From a dropdown menu, the museum chose as its reasons for reporting the post, “Denying a violent event, such as Sandy Hook, the Holocaust, and the September 11th attacks” and “Harassed or intimidated with violence.”
But Twitter rejected the museum’s complaint with this automated response: “After reviewing the available information, we want to let you know AngeleLave51660 hasn’t broken our safety policies. We know this isn’t the answer you’re looking for. If this account breaks our policies in the future, we’ll notify you.”
The museum posted pictures of the original offensive tweet, the attempt to report it and Twitter’s response.
“When you report a tweet for harassing, ‘Holocaust denial’ is explicitly mentioned as a reason for reporting,” the museum tweeted. “And yet @X @Support responds that such antisemitic, hateful, Holocaust denial post does not break their safety policies.”
The museum also reposted Musk’s announcement that “Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature,’ except for DMs.”
Musk’s announcement appears to violate Apple and Google policies, which say that apps must give users the ability to block others. But Musk has said the “mute” function gives users enough protection from abuse. It was unclear when Twitter, which now formally goes by the name X, plans to turn off the ability to block an account.
The museum tweeted that it relies on the blocking function as a “practical measure” to stop comments from “users who promote denial and hatred.”
“Engaging in discussions with people and accounts that seek to abuse the memory of victims of Auschwitz is against the values we believe in,” the museum wrote. “These individuals do not seek discourse; they aim to inflict pain. In this context, blocking is a necessary step to ensure that these harmful voices don’t persist in their repetitive attacks on memory.”
The museum called on social media platforms to “actively counter hate speech and halt its normalization.”
Other examples of hateful messages the museum contends with on a daily basis included one from @SantinoCat85 saying “Gas chambers are a myth” and another one, from @Jon530257974225, who tweeted “no one cares about your bulls— holocaust sob stories anymore.” Some of these accounts have fewer than 10 followers.
Twitter’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But Auschwitz memorial spokesperson Paweł Sawicki, in response to a request from the Forward for more information, said they’re seeing “much more antisemitic and denial content published” than in the past.
Why not just ignore the comments, especially since so many of them seem to come from accounts with hardly any followers?
“We decided to raise the voice as it concerns the issue of moderation and responsibility of social media companies,” Sawicki said. “We usually publish a screenshot rather than the tweet” to reduce promoting their content while at the same time showing “the danger of hateful language and symbols.”
Sawicki added that they “do not engage” in dialogue with deniers. But merely muting them “would still make our posts exposed to their attacks and this is something we cannot allow.”
Separately, a “community note” appeared on Twitter over the weekend declaring Leo Frank’s guilt in the rape and murder a young girl.
Frank, a Jewish factory manager, was convicted of the crime in a case rife with antisemitism; he was then lynched by a mob in 1915. But he was posthumously pardoned and experts today believe he was innocent.
Community notes saying he was guilty were appended to an Anti-Defamation League tweet marking the Aug. 17 anniversary of the lynching. Those notes, which can be created by Twitter users to add context or fact-checking to someone else’s posts, linked to white supremacist sites. The notes were added, deleted by Twitter, added again and ultimately permanently removed.
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