Facebook will ban Holocaust denial or distortion content: Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said that he believes the new policy strikes the “right balance” in drawing the lines between what is and isn’t acceptable speech.

Facebook Inc’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced a new hate speech policy on Monday, saying it will ban posts that denies or distorts the Holocaust and will start directing people to authoritative sources if they search for information about the genocide enforced by Nazis.

FILE PHOTO: Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the annual Munich Security Conference in Germany, February 15, 2020. REUTERS/Andreas Gebert/File photo (REUTERS)

The company’s decision comes amid a push by Holocaust survivors around the world who lent their voices to a campaign targeting Zuckerberg, urging him to take action to remove Holocaust denial posts from the social media site. It is also Facebook’s latest attempt to take action against conspiracy theories and misinformation ahead of the US presidential election on November 3.

“We’ve long taken down posts that praise hate crimes or mass murder, including the Holocaust. But with rising anti-Semitism, we’re expanding our policy to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust as well. If people search for the Holocaust on Facebook, we’ll start directing you to authoritative sources to get accurate information,” Zuckerberg said in a blog post on Monday.

Zuckerberg said that he believes the new policy strikes the “right balance” in drawing the lines between what is and isn’t acceptable speech. “I’ve struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimizing or denying the horror of the Holocaust. 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,” he wrote.

“Enforcement of these policies cannot happen overnight. There is a range of content that can violate these policies, and it will take some time to train our reviewers and systems on enforcement,” he said.

The World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee praised the decision and said that the move followed ongoing conversations with Facebook. “For several years, the World Jewish Congress has advocated for Facebook to remove Holocaust denial content from its platform, and has worked with the social media company’s policy teams to review such posts and classify them as hate speech under the company’s community standards,” it said in a statement.