H EADLINES
Facebook Will Now Ban Holocaust Denial
FACEBOOK ANNOUNCED
that it will now ban any
posts that deny or distort the
Holocaust, a landmark change
from its previous policy.

For years, Facebook and its
CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had
defended Holocaust denial as
a misguided but legitimate
form of expression. In 2018,
regarding Holocaust denial,
he said, “I don’t believe that
our platform should take that
down because I think there are
things that diff erent people get
wrong.” LEGAL
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That approach garnered
widespread outcry from
scholars and anti-Semitism
watchdogs. On Oct. 12, Zuckerberg
wrote in a Facebook post
that he now believes banning
Holocaust denial “is the right
balance.” “I’ve struggled with the
Th is summer, the Anti-
Defamation League, NAACP
and other civil rights groups
organized a boycott of Facebook
in which 1,000 companies,
including major corpora-
tions, paused advertising on
the site for at least one month
in protest of its lack of action
against hate speech, including
10% of respondents believed
Jews caused the Holocaust,
while half of respondents said
they had seen Holocaust denial
online. Th e World Jewish Congress
has been speaking with
Facebook about how to combat
anti-Semitism since 2016, and
has held daily meetings leading
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tension between standing
for free expression and the
harm caused by minimizing
or denying the horror of the
Holocaust,” he wrote. “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.”
Th e change comes aft er
months of activism by anti-dis-
crimination groups pushing
Facebook to change its policies
on hate speech in general and
Holocaust denial in partic-
ular. It also comes amid rising
anti-Semitism in the United
States and Europe, and weeks
ahead of a presidential election
that analysts and govern-
ment agencies fear will spark
violence from white suprema-
cist groups.

JEWISH EXPONENT
Holocaust denial. Th e Claims
Conference, which coordinates
restitution and reparations
payments for Holocaust survi-
vors, organized a campaign
called #NoDenyingIt in which
Holocaust survivors appealed
directly to Zuckerberg via
video to take action against
Holocaust denial.

Other Jewish organiza-
tions worked in consultation
with Facebook to persuade the
site to ban Holocaust denial.

Facebook’s statement credited
the World Jewish Congress and
American Jewish Committee
with advising on the new
policy. It also cited a recent poll
showing a lack of knowledge
regarding the Holocaust among
Americans younger than 40.

Th e poll found that more than
up to this policy change, said
Yfat Barak-Cheney, the group’s
director of international aff airs.

She said her organization
preferred engagement with
Facebook rather than external
activism because, through her
meetings, she saw the social
media giant gradually move
toward banning Holocaust
denial. “We have fl agged to them
Holocaust denial, over and over,
as an issue on the platform, as
an issue in principle that needs
to be recognized as anti-Sem-
itism and hate speech,”
Barak-Cheney said. “Holocaust
denial is not a studying and
discussion about historical
facts. It’s a tool to spread hatred
against Jews.”
She added, “Th ey’ve adapted
and they’ve come to understand
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H EADLINES
that by allowing Holocaust
denial on their platform, and
Holocaust distortion, they’re
actually allowing the spread
of hatred.”
In a statement, the Anti-
Defamation League said
it was “relieved” to see the
ban on Holocaust denial
and called for the company
to issue public reports about
enforcing the policy.

“While we are relieved to
learn this news, we also would
note that platform decisions
of this nature are only
as good as the companies’
enforcement,” read the state-
ment by ADL CEO Jonathan
Greenblatt. “Facebook now
needs to reassure the global
community that it is taking
meaningful and compre-
hensive steps to ensure that
Holocaust deniers are no
longer able to take advantage of
Facebook’s various platforms
to spread a nt isem it ism
and hate.”
Facebook’s announcement
of the new policy did not defi ne
what constitutes “content
that denies or distorts the
Holocaust.” And the company
said it “will take some time to
train our reviewers and systems
on enforcement,” and that
deletion of Holocaust denial
“cannot happen overnight.”
Th e company told Bloomberg
News that the policy applied
only to Holocaust denial, not
to denial of other genocides,
like the Armenian or Rwandan
genocides. “Normally this process
would be the other way
around,” with Facebook
spelling out rules before
announcing a new policy,
Barak-Cheney said. “Here,
because of the importance of
the issue and how prevalent it
has been, they really decided
to make the announcement,
but they have a lot of hard
work ahead of them on
making those boundaries.”
The new policy comes
aft er Facebook tightened its
restrictions on other forms
of anti-Semitism and hate
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM BUSINESS DIRECTORY
speech. Last week, Facebook
announced that it was banning
all groups and pages promoting
QAnon, the anti-Semitic
conspiracy theory. In August,
Facebook banned posts about
Jews controlling the world
as well as other forms of
hate speech.

Th e changes on Holocaust
denial and other forms of
discrimination refl ect a larger
shift in Facebook regarding
how it deals with freedom of
expression and combating hate
speech. Zuckerberg, invoking
the First Amendment, has
consistently said that he favors
allowing a broad array of
speech regarding politics and
other issues, even as a chorus
of voices has asked him to do
more to prohibit bigotry and
disinformation. In a speech last year at
Georgetown University,
Zuckerberg said, “I’m proud
that our values at Facebook
are inspired by the American
tradition, which is more
supportive of free expression
than anywhere else.” During
the George Floyd protests this
year, Facebook allowed a post
by President Donald Trump,
who has personally courted
Zuckerberg, that said, “When
the looting starts, the shooting
starts.” Twitter fl agged the post
as glorifying violence.

“I know many people
are upset that we’ve left the
President’s posts up, but our
position is that we should
enable as much expression as
possible unless it will cause
imminent risk of specific
harms or dangers spelled out
in clear policies,” Zuckerberg
wrote in a post defending
the decision.

Reacting to the new policy,
the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum addressed
the issue of freedom of expres-
sion, saying in a statement,
“Freedom of speech is vital
to our democracy, but it does
not require any organization
to host antisemitic speech
that can potentially foment
violence.” ●
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