Facebook Promises To Ban Holocaust Denial Posts Under Its Hate Speech Policy
On Monday (Oct. 12), Facebook announced its newest promise to ban Holocaust denial posts under its hate speech policy; marking a 2-year reversal of the initial and controversial stance held by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish.
Additionally, the social media platform said their newest move “marks another step in our effort to fight hate on our services,” arriving amid a “well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people.”
RELATED: Nick Cannon Pledged Donation To Jewish Center After Learning Holocaust History
In addition to banning pages that promote the extremists conspiracy group QAnon, the company is now adding to the list or prohibitions any content that “denies or distorts” the tragic event in history that saw about 6 million Jews and millions of others systematically killed, including LGBTQ individuals and those with physical disabilities.
Furthermore, two years ago, Zuckerberg defended his platform’s decision not to remove such posts on the Holocaust’s existence. He told Recode tech journalist Kara Swisher at the time, “I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened. I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong.”
RELATED: Mary Trump Claims ‘Racist’ Uncle Donald Trump Used The N-Word & Anti-Semitic Slurs Loosely