{"id":1449,"date":"2020-11-29T16:00:16","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T16:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/?p=1329534"},"modified":"2020-11-29T16:00:16","modified_gmt":"2020-11-29T16:00:16","slug":"facebook-said-it-would-ban-holocaust-deniers-instead-its-algorithm-provided-a-network-for-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=1449","title":{"rendered":"Facebook said It would ban holocaust deniers. Instead, its algorithm provided a network for them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Last month, Facebook announced a crackdown: The platform would no longer permit content that \u201cdenies or distorts the Holocaust\u201d as part of its larger policy prohibiting hate speech.<\/p>\n

While noting that successful enforcement could take time, Monika Bickert, Facebook\u2019s vice president of content policy, explained the ban in a blog post<\/a>. \u201cOur decision is supported by the well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

But as of mid-November, The Markup has found, numerous Facebook pages for well-known Holocaust denial groups remain active \u2014 and for users who find the pages, Facebook\u2019s algorithms continue to recommend related content, effectively creating a network for pushing anti-Semitic content.<\/p>\n

Facebook has long struggled to tamp down on quick-traveling misinformation and shape-shifting conspiracy groups, but many of the discriminatory pages The Markup found either belonged to groups with a long history of prominence within the Holocaust denial movement or directly referenced well-known anti-Semitic or white nationalist memes, making them seem like obvious targets for Facebook\u2019s crackdown.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether Facebook considers the posts and groups The Markup found unacceptable. The company did not announce how it would define Holocaust denialism, and the company did not respond to multiple requests for comment; all the pages and posts referenced in this article were still active as of Nov. 23 at 5 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n

[Read: Why this security engineer loves working in infosec<\/span><\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

None of the organizations tied to the Facebook pages mentioned in this story responded to The Markup\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

The Markup relied on the judgments of outside organizations that monitor hate groups to identify Holocaust denial groups. And while some pages were explicit\u2014like the \u201cHolohoax tales\u201d\u2014others were more subtle and shied away from explicitly mentioning the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

For example, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) has a Facebook page with more than 1,300 followers, despite being identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as<\/a> \u201ca pseudo-academic organization that claims to seek \u2018truth and accuracy in history,\u2019 but whose real purpose is to promote Holocaust denial and defend Nazism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group also has a Twitter account, despite that company\u2019s similar ban<\/a> on Holocaust denial.<\/p>\n

Twitter spokesperson Ian Plunkett told The Markup that the account is \u201cnot currently in violation of our policies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recent posts on the group\u2019s Facebook page include a link to an episode of the Institute for Historical Review\u2019s podcast attacking the post-WWII Nuremberg trials for being unfair to the German officials who were found guilty of committing war crimes. The host of that podcast, Mark Weber, is described<\/a> by the SPLC as having \u201cprobably done more than any other American to popularize denial of the World War II Holocaust of European Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another post links to an article listing Jewish donors who gave the largest amount during the 2020 U.S. election cycle. And another consisted of a link to a Guardian article<\/a> about how most young people in the U.K. were unaware of many specifics of the Holocaust, adding a string of astonished-face emoji. Comments on the post attacked Jewish people for supposedly trying to assert \u201cvictimhood\u201d as a result of the Nazi regime\u2019s genocidal ambitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cHolocaust denial, whether on Facebook or elsewhere, is most effective when the deniers mix enough factual material into their arguments to confuse readers (including content moderators) or obfuscate their core beliefs,\u201d said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). \u201cOthers have become adept at communicating with codewords to avoid detection by content moderators. This underscores the importance of high-quality training for both human moderators and detection algorithms.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a box on the side of the IHR page, Facebook has suggestions for other \u201crelated pages\u201d that users might find interesting. Facebook routinely recommends groups\u2014but in this case, the algorithmically derived suggestions potentially serve as a direct vector for radicalization.<\/p>\n

Facebook, for instance, points visitors to IHR\u2019s page to another Facebook group, called CODOH Revisionist Forum, short for Committee for Open Debate on the Holocast. In a 2010 report<\/a>, the Anti-Defamation League said that group\u2019s mission was \u201cto disseminate Holocaust denial to students on college campuses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visitors to the CODOH page would find a link to a blog entry titled \u201cHolohoax Tales\u201d on the organization\u2019s website. And Facebook users may also encounter additional recommendations for pages to visit on the platform, including Castle Hill Publishers, which the SPLC lists<\/a> as another active Holocaust denial group and which has deep ties to CODOH. From there, Facebook recommended a fan page for Ernst Z\u00fcndel, a neo-Nazi who died<\/a> in 2017 who was notable both for his Holocaust denial and his authorship of a book titled \u201cThe Hitler We Loved and Why.\u201d From the Z\u00fcndel page, Facebook recommended a group named after the white nationalist \u201cwhite genocide\u201d conspiracy theory, which charges<\/a> that a shadowy cabal of Jews is actively working to destroy the White race by encouraging race-mixing.<\/p>\n

And the chain of recommended pages continues, leading users further and further into a web of discriminatory content. While many of these pages in this algorithmically created network focus on anti-Semitism, some of the recommended pages promote hate against other groups, like African Americans.<\/p>\n

Page recommendations on Facebook do vary from user to user, but these related-page recommendations appeared both when The Markup visited them directly while logged into a reporter\u2019s personal account and when the page was captured through a direct, not-logged-in visit by the third-party web archiving tool Archive.Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, Holocaust denial has been a serious problem that ADL has been flagging for Facebook for more than a decade,\u201d Greenblatt said, while also noting that Facebook has removed some anti-Semitic pages after announcing the ban. \u201cThe good news is that they are finally taking action, but clearly much more needs to be done to effectively identify and remove this form of blatant antisemitism on their platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facebook initially resisted banning Holocaust-denying content<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a 2018 interview, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told Recode<\/a> that, while he didn\u2019t agree with those saying the Holocaust never happened, he didn\u2019t feel it was his company\u2019s job to remove that content from his platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don\u2019t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong,\u201d Zuckerberg said.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s stated reason for the policy change stemmed from concerns about how public ignorance about the Holocaust related to the prevalence of anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstitutions focused on Holocaust research and remembrance, such as Yad Vashem, have noted that Holocaust education is also a key component in combatting anti-Semitism,\u201d Bickert wrote at the time.<\/p>\n

The post also noted that, beginning later this year, Facebook will start directing users to factual information about the Holocaust when they search for terms related to the event or terms associated with Holocaust denial. Those information boxes have yet to appear on any of the Holocaust denial pages The Markup identified in this story.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Markup<\/a> by Aaron Sankin and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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