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Facebook’s relationship with anti-Semitism and historical denial has long been thorny. In 2018, Zuckerberg was widely criticized for stating in an interview that while as a Jew he found Holocaust denial deeply offensive, posts that questioned the suffering of 6 million Jews during World War II would not necessarily be removed from the social network. At the time, he justified himself by saying that he thought the best way to combat hate speech was with positive speech.
Today, the founder of Facebook changed his mind. “I have long struggled with the tension between defending free speech and the harm done by minimizing or denying the horror of the Holocaust,” he wrote in a post. “My thinking, as well as our broader policies on hate speech, evolved as I saw data showing an increase in anti-Semitic violence. Drawing the correct lines between what is and what is not an acceptable discourse is not easy, but considering the current state of the world, I think that is the right balance ”. From now on, he added, anyone who searches for “Holocaust” in the Facebook bar will be directed to correct information provided by authorized sources.
Current Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also commented on the decision, writing that it “has special meaning for me and many other members of the Facebook community.”
This summer, the company had already taken some timid steps in this direction by announcing that it would ban common anti-Semitic stereotypes that represent Jews at the head of the world or major global institutions. However, an investigation by the British organization Institute for Strategic Dialogue revealed in August that simply typing “holocaust” in Facebook’s search bar easily led to dozens of pages denying the historic event, with links to publishers publishing books. revisionists. The Institute had identified at least 36 Facebook groups animated by more than 366,000 followers specifically dedicated to Holocaust denial. The algorithm did the rest.
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Since July, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, an international organization that negotiates compensation for victims of Nazi persecution, has lobbied Facebook to include Holocaust denial in the definition of hate speech. The digital campaign, directed directly to the CEO of Facebook, included the posting of many video messages from Holocaust survivors.
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The new policies of the Menlo Park company appear to provide a definitive answer to the concerns of the Jewish community. And they join other precautions Facebook is putting in place as the November 3 U.S. presidential election approaches: The company recently banned more than 250 white supremacist organizations from its platforms and began seriously distancing itself from the theory’s rise. of the conspiracy. Far-right QAnon, which is also beginning to spread in Europe after having remained on the most extreme fringes of the American web for years.
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