Negationist content
While Facebook does not remove denial content, nine Holocaust survivors are asking the social network to change its policy.
In July 2018, Mark Zuckerberg, who is himself Jewish, explained that he did not want to remove denialist posts from Facebook.
–KEYSTONE
–
Nine Holocaust survivors on Wednesday asked Mark Zuckerberg, founder and director of Facebook, to remove denial content from the social network. Among them is Eva Schloss, half-sister of Anne Frank, now 91 years old.
–
The survivors testify in a video posted on the largest social network in the world. It was carried out in partnership with the Claims Conference, an organization created in 1951 in particular to work to recover looted property.
–
“When people say online that the holocaust never happened, they are saying that my father, my sister and sixty members of my family were not murdered by the Nazis,” says Lea Evron, 85. Of Polish origin, she escaped the extermination camps along with her mother when her father and sister were deported in 1943.
–
Negationism not prohibited
In a document published in early July, the anti-Semitism organization Anti Defamation League (ADL) gave several examples of Facebook groups in which users openly questioned the existence of the Holocaust or its extent. Among them the CODOH group or “committee for an open debate on the holocaust”, where messages were still visible Wednesday denying that the genocide of the Jews of Europe took place during the Second World War.
–
In the United States, revisionism and negationism are not prohibited by law and jurisprudence tends to place them under the protection of the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. In many European states, on the other hand, revisionist or negationist remarks are liable to criminal prosecution. In July 2018, Mark Zuckerberg, who is himself Jewish, explained that he did not want to remove denialist posts from Facebook.
–
Asked by AFP, Facebook said it was removing any content that “defended” the Holocaust, “tried to justify it,” “accused victims of lying” or incited hatred or violence against Jews. But the platform does not remove content “only because it is false,” said a spokesperson, and therefore does not remove negationist content.
–
(ATS / NXP)
–
