Holocaust Deniers Gather on Facebook

Holocaust Deniers Gather on Facebook

By ROBERT MACKEY

Two bloggers, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Brian Cuban of The Cuban Revolution, have been hammering the social-networking site Facebook in recent days for refusing to delete the accounts of groups like “Holohoax” and “Holocaust: A Series of Lies,” which act as forums for Holocaust deniers.

On Tuesday, in a post headlined “Facebook Remains Stubbornly Proud Of Position On Holocaust Denial,” Mr. Arrington wrote:

Facebook is apparently done talking about Holocaust denial for now. A couple of groups that got more out of hand than the rest were taken down, but the company’s policy of permitting the groups on the site remains.

As ABC News reported on Tuesday, Facebook has removed some groups, but stopped short of an outright ban on helping Holocaust deniers to network:

Facebook said it disabled two other controversial groups, “Based on the facts? There was no Holocaust” and “Holocaust is a Holohoax.”

But despite stating that the company finds “Holocaust denial repugnant and ignorant,” it has decided to let three groups continue to exist.

“We have spent considerable time internally discussing the issues of Holocaust denial and have come to the conclusion that the mere statement of denying the holocaust is not a violation of our terms,” Brian Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman, told ABCNews.com in an e-mail.

Schnitt said, however, that in countries where it is illegal to deny the Holocaust, such as Germany, France and Austria, Facebook has decided to ban all Holocaust denial groups.

On Sunday Mr. Cuban wrote in an open letter to Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, on his blog:

By allowing these groups whether they number 1 or 1,000, Facebook is not promoting open discussion of a controversial issue. It is promoting and encouraging hatred towards ethnic and religious groups, nothing more.

By claiming open discussion as the rationale for allowing these groups to exist, Facebook is playing games with semantics. Facebook is taking form over substance to protect their imaginary subjective corporate line in the sand they have drawn.

In an e-mail interview with a blogger for CNET, Mr. Schnitt, the Facebook spokesman, framed the matter in terms of free speech:

The bottom line is that, of course, we abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive and ignorant. However, we believe people have a right to discuss these ideas and we want Facebook to be a place where ideas, even controversial ideas, can be discussed.

Mr. Arrington, who has also ridiculed Facebook for allowing Holocaust deniers to post their opinions on the site, but not allowing some photographs showing women breast-feeding, urged Facebook to take a more black-and-white approach to the issue:

Sure, we can’t shut down the dark places on the Internet where people are free to hate Jews and post pictures of breast feeding mothers. But Facebook can take a stand and say it won’t happen in their back yard. Holocaust denial is hate speech, and it cannot be given a place to take root.

This isn’t a slippery slope, Facebook. It’s evil. Pure evil. Don’t plant a flag on the wrong side of the line. Stand firm against racial and religious hatred, even if you don’t have to. You’ll look back in fifty years and be proud that you did.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted that “Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a Jewish former Harvard University student.”

Mr. Schnitt told ABC that while some employees of the social-networking service came from families marked by the Holocaust, that was not influencing their decision:

Many of us at Facebook have direct personal connection to the Holocaust, through parents who were forced to flee Europe or relatives who could not escape. We believe in Facebook’s mission that giving people tools to make the world more open is a better way to combat ignorance or deception than censorship, though we recognize that others, including those at the company, disagree.

One unexpected result of the public calls to shut down these groups is that the tiny Facebook group “Holocaust: A Series of Lies” has gotten slightly less tiny in recent days. On Tuesday, ABC reported that when a 25-year-old student from Portland, Ore. “heard that the social networking site was under pressure to ban Holocaust denial groups, he decided to join one.” A visit to the group today, which had 39 members yesterday but has now swollen to 44, shows that the student interviewed by ABC, Abbas Hodroj, posted a message yesterday linking to the ABC Web site and saying, “Hey guys, we are getting the word out there.” What exactly that “word” is though is not clear. Of the 21 comments posted on the group’s discussion wall though, 19 have been posted in the last week and at least half of those take the group to task.

h/t to Brian Cuban via Twitter

Critics Blast Facebook Over Holocaust Denial Groups

View from a booth: this is a serious issue, with Facebook having over 200,000,000 users worldwide. Arguments that "both sides" should be presented on the issue are just disingenuous: there is NO honest debate over whether the Holocaust occurred; those who still debate it are Jew-haters and/or Israel haters. (e.g., Ahmedinejad, who has a problem with reading and comprehending publicly established facts) Pure and simple. FB should shut those sites down IMMEDIATELY. Brian Cuban and Michael Arrington are absolutely correct, as I have told Brian many times in encouraging tweets on Twitter. Kol HaKavod to Brian and Michael for having the balls to use their positions for the better social good.

Randy Shiner

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

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A screen shot of the Facebook group 'Holocaust is a Myth.'

You can't breastfeed on Facebook, but you can deny the Holocaust.

Tech bloggers led by Brian Cuban, brother of billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, are leading the fight to get the social-networking site to remove groups that deny the Nazi genocide.

"You may or may not know that Holocaust Denial is a crime in many European countries including countries where Facebook seeks to establish a presence such as Germany," Cuban wrote to Facebook last week, giving links to five Holocaust-denial pages on the site.

In an interview with CNN later in the week, Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt defended the groups' presence on the site.

"We have a lot of internal debate and we bring in experts to talk about it," he said. "Just being offensive or objectionable doesn't get it taken off Facebook. We want [Facebook] to be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones."

TechCruch founder Michael Arrington picked up where Cuban left off in a scathing post Sunday entitled "Jew Haters Welcome At Facebook, As Long As They Aren't Lactating" (warning: disturbing images and offensive language).

He pointed out that Facebook removes images of breastfeeding mothers, and posted screenshots of anti-Semitic comments on the Holocaust-denial-group pages.

On Monday, Facebook removed two of the five groups Cuban mentioned.

"The group description didn't promote hate but the members were beginning to use it as a forum to promote hate through their wall posts," Schnitt told PC Magazine via e-mail.

But as of Tuesday morning, three were still up: "Holocaust: A series of Lies," "Holohoax" and "Holocaust is a Myth."

Open Letter To Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

View from a booth:

Good for Brian for getting out in front on this issue despite corporate blathering from Facebook and hate from the usual suspects. Let us see if Mark Zuckerberg has a pair of balls or something else.

Randy Shiner

Open Letter To Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Buzz up!vote now

May 10, 2009

Mark:

The last 7 days have seen much debate on the issue of Holocaust Denial Groups on Facebook.  There has been a lot of focus on the issues of free speech, open discussion of controversial issues and Facebook Terms Of Service(TOS).

While I have made it clear that I would like to see these groups removed, I have done a poor job in articulating why. I attempted to take a short-sighted, back door “lawyer’s approach” with Facebook by alleging that Holocaust Denial was illegal in other countries and, therefore, a violation of Facebook TOS.  While at the time, these were legitimate issues, I should have focused on the real issue.  The issue of the proliferation of Facebook groups that promote hatred of religious and ethnics groups and the hate speech those groups perpetrate. While you may have your doubts, I submit that this includes those who promote the fringe revisionist theory of Holocaust Denial.

The Holocaust Denial movement  is nothing more than a pretext to allow the preaching of hatred against Jews and to recruit other like minded individuals to do the same.  Allowing these groups to flourish on Facebook under the guise of “open discussion”  does nothing more than help spread their  message of hate.  Is this the kind of open discussion that Facebook wants to encourage?  Is this really where they want to draw their line?

It is undisputed that as a collective , Holocaust Deniers are overwhelmingly  people who are antisemitic.  One cannot be separated from the other.   They use a fringe, discredited historical theory as a pretext and rallying point to perpetrate and promote their message of hate using Facebook as  recruiting ground.   By allowing these groups whether they number 1 or 1000, Facebook is not promoting open discussion of  a controversial issue.  It is  promoting and encouraging hatred towards ethnic and religious groups, nothing more.

By claiming open discussion as the rationale for allowing these groups to exist, Facebook is playing games with semantics.  Facebook is taking form over substance to protect their imaginary subjective corporate line in the sand they have drawn.

If Facebook is serious about encouraging open discourse on controversial subjects,  let’s start with Facebook itself.  Let’s talk about the controversial decision to allow Holocaust Denial groups.  Let’s talk about transparency.  Sending out canned email answers or spouting canned corporate-speak in an interview is not transparent.  I would like to see transparency on the specifics of how Facebook went about arriving at this controversial decision.  I would like you to address the following questions:

In a CNN interview,   Facebook representative Barry Schnitt stated:

“It’s a difficult decision to make. We have a lot of internal debate and we bring in experts to talk about it,” Schnitt said. “Just being offensive or objectionable doesn’t get it taken off Facebook. We want it [the site] to be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones.”

Mark, I would like to know who at Facebook was involved in the “internal debate”  that resulted in the decision that Holocaust Denial does not constitute hate speech.  How does Facebook define “internal debate”  How many people were involved?  What was their expertise to discuss this issue?  Did they bring their personal beliefs to the table?   What safeguards were employed to ensure objectivity in a decision that is innately subjective?  Were attorneys consulted that have experience in such matters or was it general counsel?  Do you agree that something can be legal but still constitute hate speech?  Was the final decision yours?  Did the buck stop with you?

I would also like to know what experts were consulted on this issue.  Were any Holocaust Denial experts consulted?  Were any experts on antisemitism consulted?   Were any hate speech experts in general  consulted?  If so, I would appreciate it if you would identify these experts spoken of by Barry Schnitt in his CNN interview.

Finally, Mark, in an interview for the CNET blog “Technically Incorrect”, Barry Schnitt stated:

“One thing to consider that someone actually mentioned in the thread was the idea that there may be a benefit to having these ideas discussed in the open. Would we rather Holocaust denial was discussed behind closed doors or quietly propagated by anonymous sources? Or would we rather it was discussed in the open on Facebook where people’s real names and their photo is associated with it for their friends, peers, and colleagues to see?”

Is this an official corporate statement from Facebook on how Holocaust Denial should be addressed in society?  What kind of open discussion was Mr. Schnitt talking about?   How was he defining  “open discussion”?  How does Facebook define “open discussion”?  What experts did Facebook consult in coming to the conclusion that “open discussion” was the most appropriate way to deal with this subject?   Are you aware of the Jewish/Holocaust historical significance of such a statement Mark?   I sent an email to Facebook asking for clarification of his statement but received no response other than the canned ,”we received your email”.

Mark, I hope you will take the time to respond to these important questions and issues, not just with regards to the Holocaust Denial issue, but with regards to transparency in how Facebook subjectively comes to these types of decisions in general.

Sincerely

Brian Cuban