Jewish Agency welcomes Facebook's ban of Holocaust denial content
Chairman Isaac Herzog offered his further cooperation in combating antisemitism on the platform.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFJewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog(photo credit: JEWISH AGENCY)
Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog announced his support on Wednesday of Facebook's recent decision to remove Holocaust denial content from the platform.Speaking to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Herzog described the social media giant's move as "one of the most influential for a long time" and "very significant in teaching the history and lessons of the Holocaust and fighting its denial." He offered his further cooperation in combating antisemitism on the platform.Sandberg agreed that removing hate speech was important, but explained that just as important was directing users to reliable information and educational sources. As such, they have therefore decided to redirect those who search on the website for subjects relating to the Holocaust to outside sources which provide educational material on the genocide.As a result in this change of policy, more than 250 white supremacist organizations have been banned by Facebook and policies have been updated to “address militia groups and QAnon.” Altogether, the platform has taken down 22.5 million “pieces” of hate speech of some kind or another within the second quarter of the year.Despite working to direct users to educational content, however, it was soon discovered that some Holocaust education posts were also being removed. This was made apparent when Forward journalist Izabella Tabarovsky's article on the atrocities that occurred in the Soviet Union during the Holocaust, titled "Most Jews Weren’t Murdered In Death Camps. It’s Time To Talk About The Other Holocaust.""I guess this is the result of Facebook’s ban against Holocaust denial? It just made invisible my article about the Holocaust in Soviet territories. Unimpressed with this effort to fight Holocaust denial so far," Tabarovsky said over Twitter.A Facebook spokesperson later told The Jerusalem Post that this was indeed a result of their new policy, with the headline raising a red flag in the algorithm.Tamar Beeri and Zachary Keyser contributed to this report.
