Oh Right, That
As of Monday, October 12, 2020, Facebook says it will prohibit posts that deny the existence or severity of the Holocaust, a thing that the company didn’t already do.
It’s another step in a push by Facebook — which has been around for 16 years, mind you — to better manage the dangerous conspiracy theories and misinformation that get shared and amplified on its platform, Business Insider reports, following a ban last week of QAnon pages.
180 Degrees
Banning Holocaust denial seems reasonable when you have a social platform with billions of active users. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg actively pushed to preserve Holocaust deniers’ right to spread their nonsense on Facebook as recently as 2018.
Zuckerberg told Recode back then that “I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong.”
Money, Mouth
Now, finally, Facebook is expanding its internal hate speech policy to include “any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust,” according to the company’s announcement.
Details on the “how” are still scarce. For example, it doesn’t clarify what it means to “distort” the Holocaust in Facebook’s view, though it’s likely a reference to how conspiracy theorists attempt to downplay the genocide’s death toll.
Anyone posting Holocaust denial content — and as BI reports, that’s quite a lot of people — will find themselves redirected to credible resources found off of Facebook, the company says.
READ MORE: Facebook bans Holocaust-denial content after allowing it for years [Business Insider]
More on Facebook: Here’s What It Takes to Get Kicked off Facebook (Hint: It’s A Lot)