Facebook recently released the news that they are going to ban posts denying that the Holocaust ever happened.
The website has, on multiple occasions, been criticised for not filtering the content on the website, as it is one of the biggest and fastest-spreading outlets for ‘fake news’ to circulate the word. This means, by banning Holocaust-denying posts, Facebook will not only prevent false information spreading but also, hopefully, prevent its users from committing hate crimes.
The website has previously been reluctant to ban topics, as they ‘‘struggled with the tension’’ between freedom of speech and banning these posts. Although they have previously restricted what’s allowed to discuss on their website, such as posts and pictures regarding ‘blackface’ and other common anti-Semitic topics and stereotypes, denying that the Holocaust ever happened has not been one of these topics until now.
Although the founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has always found these posts offensive, as he himself is Jewish, he has also argued that people had a right to publish whatever they wanted and that they weren’t ‘‘intentionally’’ getting the facts wrong.
But as the news of the new ban of the topic was released, Zuckerberg wrote a public Facebook post, commenting on their new policies.
‘‘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’’ Zuckerberg wrote in his Facebook post.
He continued the Facebook post by saying that this is the right move ‘‘with the current state of the world’’.
Alice Sjöberg
Image coursey of Alex Haney on Unsplash. Image licence found here. No changes were made to this image.