Facebook finally bans Holocaust denial content

[ThinkingSapien]

Facebook finally bans Holocaust denial content

Facebook finally bans Holocaust denial content​

The company updated its hate speech policy to prohibit such material.

Facebook is clamping down on content that “denies or distorts the Holocaust.” It banned such material under its updated hate speech policy.

“Our 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,” Monika Bickert, Facebook’s VP of content policy, wrote in a blog post. “According to a recent survey of adults in the US aged 18-39, almost a quarter said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, that it had been exaggerated or they weren’t sure.”

It’s Facebook’s latest effort to stamp out anti-Semitism. The company recently banned “stereotypes about the collective power of Jews that often depicts them running the world or its major institutions,” as Bickert pointed out.

Facebook has been working with global and local groups such as the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee for several years to better understand how hatred is conveyed online. The company has also collaborated with organizations that tackle anti-Semitism, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

It’ll take some time before Facebook can effectively police this ban, Bickert wrote. The company will need to train its content reviewers and systems on how to tackle such content, as there’s a wide range of material that would violate the rules. Later this year, Facebook will start directing people who search for terms linked to Holocaust denial or the atrocity in general to “credible information” from third-party sources.

 

[jredden92]

What took them so long? Good riddance.

 

[meltzerboy2]

I suppose they have a right to do this, and it seems at first blush a good idea. However, I think it important to remember that censorship of any kind, even of the most vile material, can become a slippery slope.

 

[SantaFe]

Good thing I deleted my facebook 10 years ago, best decision I ever made.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

even of the most vile material, can become a slippery slope.

What do you think they will slip into?

 

[meltzerboy2]

I meant there is a slippery slope regarding what else might be censored, such as views that are not as extreme as this.

 

[jredden92]

I suppose they have a right to do this, and it seems at first blush a good idea. However, I think it important to remember that censorship of any kind, even of the most vile material, can become a slippery slope.

I don’t know if this would be considered censorship as facebook is a private company and has the right to exclude whatever they want. They could always go out on the street with signs saying the holocaust never happened and see where that gets them.

 

[meltzerboy2]

Yes, that’s why I said they have a right to do this; but I’m not completely sure it is wise to do so.

 

[RhodesianSon]

All I see happening is stuff like this going to another social media platform where there won’t be as many people seeing it and calling it out which will let it grow out of sight and fester.

 

[Pattylt]

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about this. Facebook is a platform for others to use as they wish within some limits. They have every right to expand those limits as they see fit. I agree that free speech is an ideal but it also has limits when it becomes a danger to others. That’s why you can’t yell fire in a theater that isn’t on fire.

Hate speech is running rampant on the internet and honestly, I don’t care who’s doing the hating, it needs to be contained and any private company has the right to contain the speech on their platform. FB, as long as they aren’t a government website or supported by government monies, has the right to remove anything they want.

Other people are free to start their own websites where they make the rules so I have no sympathy for those claiming the left or the right is muzzling them. Many need to be muzzled. Obviously, denying the Holocaust is usually due to some variety of antisemitism.

I know FB hired a group to ensure any censoring was done fairly and in the best interests of the company. Not sure if this is one of their decisions or not but I support the reigning in of any extremism. Let people spew their hatred on their own sites. If someone really feels that they are being unfairly censored, I’m sure they can contact the company and make their case.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Facebook’s “censorship” is laughable. They banned a 6-year-old post I made in a group of the familiar joke meme of a children’s book titled, “Everyone I Don’t Like is Hitler”. By that I mean they deleted it 6 years after I posted it. Meanwhile they let bonafide hate groups posting racist memes literally all day long soldier on. If it wasn’t for the cat pictures I’d have left that platform a long time ago.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I meant there is a slippery slope regarding what else might be censored, such as views that are not as extreme as this.

That answers the question I had.

Thank you for clarifying.

My opinion, I’m not as concerned. Having looked at networks that only remove illegal content, but otherwise dont censor, it is a different experience.

People will probably end up engaging the networks that they feel have a comfortable amount of moderation.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I know FB hired a group to ensure any censoring was done fairly and in the best interests of the company. Not sure if this is one of their decisions or not but I support the reigning in of any extremism.

Not sure if this is the same group, but one of the groups that facebook has is kind of like a supreme court. But that is for individual decisions that one wishes to appeal. This is a broader policy change.

But it is also likely they have engaged other groups and individuals to help shape policy. And in some hearings last year, Facebook was being pressured about hate speech they didn’t manage.

. By that I mean they deleted it 6 years after I posted it.

It’s possible that someone flagged it and brought attention to it six years after it was posted (? ). There generally is not enough information to assess what happened internally.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Given that 6-year-old posts are generally so far down the discussion list in groups that someone would have to sit there and scroll through probably a couple hundred posts to get to one from 2014 - it’s a labor-intensive task, as I’ve done it when looking for an old picture or something - I strongly suspect it was a bot that just went around looking for the word “Hitler” and deleting everything it found.

It might be better if they focused on content that was actually fresh and was likely to be seen by people today in 2020 than going back trying to clean up stuff over 5 years old in the archives.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Given that 6-year-old posts are generally so far down the discussion list in groups that someone would have to sit there and scroll through probably a couple hundred posts to get to one from 2014 - it’s a labor-intensive task,

It was before they added Facebook Graph Search. Someone looking for it can find it quickly.

Once they added that feature, I deleted all of my likes and a lot of posts because i realized the implications. (I’m getting into a different topic here). Being able to see that a person liked a specific post on some random day is innocuous. But being able to quickly assess trends in one’s patterns of interactions (which graph search enabled) makes possible a lot of unintended disclosures.

It might be better if they focused on content that was actually fresh and was likely to be seen by people today in 2020 than going back trying to clean up stuff over 5 years old in the archives.

I don’t know what their policies are as far as automation and moderation, but if they make a new “filter” for removing certain types of content and don’t restrain the dates it looks it, it could affect content over a large time range.

Unrelated story, I got contacted by a facebook recruiter a couple months ago. I spoke with him on the phone a couple of months back. For the first 10 minutes of the call I was just trying to figure out if I were really speaking to a human being! I concluded it was human, but even that conclusion took a while to sink in. It was a weird experience.

That is only speaking to one person, not necessarily representative of the company. But it still made an impression with me.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I’m not worried about any sort of patterns emerging in my likes, except that it’s pretty obvious I like bears, cats, and Catholicism. All of which you could also find out by looking at the small amount of public info on my profile page. I certainly don’t go around liking political pages on there, except for being in the US Grace Force private group. It became obvious some years ago that whatever one “liked” on there was probably going to get shared with all your friends, so it became quite obvious who went around liking political pages because all their friends would get notified that Joe Jones just “liked” Mitt Romney or whatever.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I’m not worried about any sort of patterns emerging in my likes, except that it’s pretty obvious I like bears, cats, and Catholicism. All of which you could also find out by looking at the small amount of public info on my profile page.

I don’t think my pattern of likes looks interesting at first. Most of my posts were about plants, gardening, and technology. I was more concerned with indirect inferences that can be made. Ex: if someone found some correlation between political leanings and something unrelated, like favourt color of ice cream.

Christian Rudder, the person that started the dating sight “OKCupid” (before it was acquired by the makers of Match and Tinder) was also a math major. He appeared to have a talent for finding such correlations, and had demonstrated how to make inferences with a high success rate from unrelated data.

Now days, I make posts on occasions just to let associates know I’m still alive. For people that are my actual friends, we don’t interaction on Facebook a lot. To “Share” content, we send it to each other directly outside the view of any social network.

But back to this.

I like bears, cats, and Catholicism

If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your favourite type of bear? Ever see one close enough to reach out and touch it?

I was just watching videos on bears last night. I saw some researchers tagging bears to monitor their movements with an interest in protecting them.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I have been close enough to a research bear (one who lives on a preserve for research and educational purposes; it’s not a zoo) to touch him. I did not touch him because he didn’t like that. The lady with me got all excited and tried to pet him and he snapped at her. What he did like was to give “Kisses” where you hold a grape in your mouth sticking out, and he very delicately takes it from your mouth with his mouth. And in the process you get a little bear lip and nose smooch. So yes, I have kissed a bear.

Some people have done kisses with or tried to touch wild bears. I did not participate in that for a couple reasons, one was a legal reason and the other is I don’t think it’s healthy for the bears when people get wild bears acclimated to such interactions, so I did not wish to be part of the problem. Plus, it is a wild bear, who knows how it might react even if it has always been “friendly” before. I would add that in many if not most places in the USA, the interactions of people with wild bears in this way, especially feeding them anything, is illegal. This activity was done in a tiny part of the country where it is still legal and where bear fans go to have these sorts of supervised bear experiences. We weren’t just running around a national park going up to bears.

Bear researchers do the tagging and such that you mention. Hunters of course touch dead or dying bears, and bear rehabbers might need to touch a bear minimally, for example in giving it medical care. They try not to touch the bears they plan to release because again you don’t want to get them acclimated to people.

The bears I have dealt with are American black bears. I don’t think they’re as aggressive as grizzlies or polar bears. Sometimes they are curious about humans and the young ones often take a walk through suburban backyards. However, any bear who gets overfamiliar with humans will likely not survive, and for this reason, the oldest bears tend to be the ones who just stay away from people.

 

[RidgeSprinter]

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about this. Facebook is a platform for others to use as they wish within some limits. They have every right to expand those limits as they see fit. I agree that free speech is an ideal but it also has limits when it becomes a danger to others. That’s why you can’t yell fire in a theater that isn’t on fire.

Or yell bomb on a plane.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.

LOL I was this close to posting that.

But seriously, I do sometimes wonder if the unfettered content of the internet is such a great thing (like pro-ana websites teaching teenage girls how to function on as few calories as possible without passing out) , and Holocaust denial is just incomprehensible to me, seeing that there is proof all over the place that it happened.

But like others upthread noted…who gets to decide which speakers and platforms are responsible and deserve to be promoted?