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Facebook Bans Holocaust Denial, Reversing Previous Policy

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2 years ago

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  • Facebook announced Monday that it was expanding its hate speech policy to ban content that denies or distorts the Holocaust, a significant reversal from Mark Zuckerberg, who previously said he would leave the content up because it was not “intentional.”
  • In a blog post, the company cited the rise of antisemitism and lack of knowledge about the Holocaust among young people as the reasoning behind their decision.
  • While many applauded the move, they also argued that Facebook could have done this years ago and that the company was only taking action now because of pressure campaigns like Stop Hate for Profit.
  • Others also noted that the company made similar changes this week like banning QAnon and anti-vax ads, and argued Facebook was only reversing these policies to get good press ahead of the election.

Facebook Reverses Holocaust Denial Policy

Facebook will now ban all content that denies or distorts the Holocaust, the company announced Monday, reversing a years-long policy promoted by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg has long argued that his platform should not be an “arbiter of truth” and intervene in questions of free speech. In 2018, he told Recode that while he found Holocaust denial “deeply offensive,” as a Jewish person himself, he did not think Facebook should regulate it.

“At the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong,” he said. “I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong.” 

Now, Zuckerberg seems to have backtracked entirely, and in a Facebook post on Monday, he said the company would be expanding its hate speech policy to include Holocaust denial.

“We’ve long taken down posts that praise hate crimes or mass murder, including the Holocaust,” he wrote. “But with rising anti-Semitism, we’re expanding our policy to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust as well.”

“I’ve struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimizing or denying the horror of the Holocaust,” Zuckerberg continued.

“My own thinking has evolved as I’ve seen data showing an increase in anti-Semitic violence, as have our wider policies on hate speech.” 

Rise in Antisemitic Violence and Holocaust Ignorance

The claim that antisemitism and anti-Semitic violence is rising is one that has been backed up by numerous recent reports. In May, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that 2019 saw the highest level of antisemitic incidents since the organization first started tracking in 1979.

This general trend has been supported by other organizations, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which reported that in 2018 that the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes had increased by nearly 40% from 2014.

However, that rise also goes beyond the U.S., which is something Facebook noted in the official blogpost announcing the policy change. In addition to “the well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally,” the platform also said its decision was supported by “the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people.”

The company specifically noted a recent study that found that almost one in four U.S. adults aged 18-39 “said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, that it had been exaggerated or they weren’t sure.”

The study, which went viral last month following its publication, also found generally shocking levels of ignorance that Gen Z and Millenial Americans had about the Holocaust.

Among other things, that study reported that nationally, 63% of respondents did not know 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and one in every eight said they had not even heard about it before.

Perhaps most relevant to Facebook’s new policy, the study also found that nearly half of people said had seen Holocaust denial or distortion in posts on social media or elsewhere online. 

Facebook Accused of Fostering Antisemitism

As is the case with other forms of hate speech and conspiracies, Facebook has long been accused of letting antisemitism flourish by allowing Holocaust denial on the platform.

In July, the ADL published an extensive report on the issue titled “Facebook Has a Holocaust Denial Problem.” Among other things, that report found that both public and private Holocaust denial groups that the platform shared anti-Semitic content that violated Facebook’s existing and long-held community guidelines.

The same month that report was published, the ADL also launched the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, which involved an ad boycott of Facebook from over 1,000 major companies as well as a separate campaign where celebrities froze their Instagram and/or Facebook accounts for one day. 

While some said those efforts fell short, a number of people applauded Facebook’s Monday announcement and called the move a win for the campaign.

“Good news—another win for #StopHateForProfit: Facebook should have banned Holocaust denial long ago, but better late than never,” actor Sacha Baron Cohen, who has been a vocal critic of Facebook, tweeted.

Many others also hit on the point that this decision from Facebook was a good step, but it should have been done long ago. In a statement, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt commended the move, but noted that the ADL had been encouraging the platform to take this step for almost 10 years.

Greenblatt also implied that despite how Facebook may have presented the decision in their remarks, the company was not taking the action out of goodwill for the Jewish community, but rather because of external pressure from Stop Hate for Profit and other campaigns.

“As Facebook finally decides to take a stance against Holocaust denial and distortion, they claim it is because of their work with the Jewish community over the past year,” he said. “We question this claim because if they had wanted to support the Jewish community, this change could have been implemented at any point in the last nine years.”

Questions Over Timing

Other’s also had similar questions about the timing of the decision, noting that in the last two weeks alone, Facebook has made some major reversals, including saying it will temporarily stop all political ads after the election and announcing it will ban QAnon. On Tuesday morning, the company also announced it will start banning anti-vax ads.

As a result, many argued that, despite years of pressure, Facebook is only choosing to crack down on these issues now to get good press and appear as though they are addressing deep-rooted issues ahead of Election Day.

While plenty of people have still said these new changes are better late than never, others claim they were too little too late, pointing out that Facebook had four years to address these issues, but waited until the election was already well underway.

Facebook has been criticized both for its oversized role in allowing the spread of misinformation on the platform in the lead-up to the 2016 election and for not doing enough to address those issues in preparation for the 2020 election.

Also on Monday, a new study published by the German Marshall Fund Digital reported that engagement with misleading websites on Facebook has more than tripled since the 2016 election, despite all the so-called achievements Facebook has touted in this area, and all the millions of dollars it poured into these efforts.

See what others are saying: (The New York Times) (TIME) (The Guardian)

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Meta Reinstates Trump on Facebook and Instagram

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1 week ago

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January 26, 2023

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The company, which banned the former president two years ago for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, now says the risk to public safety has “sufficiently receded.” 

Meta Ends Suspension

Meta announced Wednesday that it will reinstate the Facebook and Instagram accounts of former President Donald Trump, just two years after he was banned for using the platforms to incite a violent insurrection.

In a blog post, the company said the suspensions would be lifted “in the coming weeks” but with “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”

Specifically, Meta stated that due to Trump’s violations of its Community Standards, he will face “heightened penalties for repeat offenses” under new protocols for “public figures whose accounts are reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest.”

“In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” the blog post continued.

The company also noted its updated protocols address content that doesn’t violate its Community Standards but “contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon.”

However, unlike direct violations, that content would have its distribution limited, but it would not be taken down. As a penalty for repeat offenses, Meta says it “may temporarily restrict access to […] advertising tools.”

As far as why the company is doing this, it explained that it assessed whether or not to extend the “unprecedented” two-year suspension it placed on Trump back in January of 2021 and determined that the risk to public safety had “sufficiently receded.”

Meta also argued that social media is “rooted in the belief that open debate and the free flow of ideas are important values” and it does not want to “get in the way of open, public and democratic debate.”

“The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” the tech giant added.

Response

Meta’s decision prompted widespread backlash from many people who argue the former president has clearly not learned from the past because he continues to share lies about the election, conspiracy theories, and other incendiary language on Truth Social.

“Trump incited an insurrection. And tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Ca.) tweeted. “He’s shown no remorse. No contrition. Giving him back access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous. @facebook caved, giving him a platform to do more harm.”

According to estimates last month by the advocacy groups Accountable Tech and Media Matters for America, over 350 of Trump’s posts on the platform would have explicitly violated Facebook’s policies against QAnon content, election claims, and harassment of marginalized groups.

“Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to reinstate Trump’s accounts is a prime example of putting profits above people’s safety,”  NAACP President Derrick Johnson told NPR. 

“It’s quite astonishing that one can spew hatred, fuel conspiracies, and incite a violent insurrection at our nation’s Capitol building, and Mark Zuckerberg still believes that is not enough to remove someone from his platforms.”

However, on the other side, many conservatives and Trump supporters have cheered the move as a win for free speech.

Others, like Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh.) also asserted that Trump “shouldn’t have been banned in the first place. Can’t happen again.”

Trump himself echoed that point on in a post on Truth Social, where he claimed Facebook has lost billions of dollars both removing and reinstating him.

“Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution! THANK YOU TO TRUTH SOCIAL FOR DOING SUCH AN INCREDIBLE JOB. YOUR GROWTH IS OUTSTANDING, AND FUTURE UNLIMITED!!!” he continued. 

The question that remains, however, is whether Trump will actually go back to Facebook or Instagram. As many have noted, the two were never his main platforms. Twitter was always been his preferred outlet, and while Elon Musk reinstated his account some time ago, he has not been posting on the site.

There is also the question of how Truth Social — which Trump created and put millions of dollars into — would survive if he went back to Meta’s platforms. The company is already struggling financially, and as Axios notes, if Trump moves back, it signals to investors that he is not confident in the company.

On the other hand, Trump’s lawyers formally petitioned Meta to reinstate him, which could indicate that this goes beyond just a symbolic win and is something he actually wants. Additionally, if he were to start engaging on Facebook and Instagram again, it would immediately give him access to his over 57 million followers across the two platforms while he continues his 2024 presidential campaign.

See what others are saying: (NPR) (Axios) (The New York Times)

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Meta Encouraged to Change Nudity Policy in Potential Win For Free The Nipple Movement

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2 weeks ago

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January 18, 2023

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The company’s oversight board said Meta’s current rules are too confusing to follow, and new guidelines should be developed to “respect international human rights standards.”

Rules Based in “A Binary View of Gender”

In a move many have described as a big step for Free The Nipple advocates, Meta’s oversight board released a decision Tuesday encouraging the company to modify its nudity and sexual activity policies so that social media users are treated “without discrimination on the basis of sex or gender.”

The board—which consists of lawyers, journalists, and academics—said the parent company of Facebook and Instagram should change its guidelines “so that it is governed by clear criteria that respect international human rights standards.”

Its decision came after a transgender and nonbinary couple had two different posts removed for alleged violations of Meta’s Sexual Solicitation Community Standard. Both posts included images of the couple bare-chested with their nipples covered along with captions discussing transgender healthcare, as they were fundraising for one of them to undergo top surgery.

Both posts, one from 2021 and another from 2022, were taken down after users reported it and Meta’s own automated system flagged it. The posts were restored after an appeal, but the oversight board stated that their initial removal highlights faults in the company’s policies. 

“Removing these posts is not in line with Meta’s Community Standards, values or human rights responsibilities,” the board said in its decision, 

According to the board, Meta’s sexual solicitation policy is too broad and creates confusion for social media users. The board also said the policy is “based on a binary view of gender and a distinction between male and female bodies.

“Such an approach makes it unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people, and requires reviewers to make rapid and subjective assessments of sex and gender, which is not practical when moderating content at scale,” the decision continued. 

Free the Nipple Movement

The board stated that the rules get especially confusing regarding female nipples, “particularly as they apply to transgender and non-binary people.”

While there are exceptions to Meta’s rules, including posts in medical or health contexts, the board said that these exceptions are “often convoluted and poorly defined.” 

“The lack of clarity inherent in this policy creates uncertainty for users and reviewers, and makes it unworkable in practice,” the decision said. 

The board’s recommended that Meta change how it manages nudity on its platforms. The group also requested that Meta provide more details regarding what content specifically violates its Sexual Solicitation Community Standard. 

For over a decade, Meta’s nudity policies have been condemned by many activists and users for strictly censoring female bodies. The Free the Nipple movement was created to combat rules that prevent users from sharing images of a bare female chest, but still allow men to freely post topless photos of themselves. 

Big names including Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, and Florence Pugh have advocated for Free the Nipple.
Meta now has 60 days to respond to the board’s recommendations. In a statement to the New York Post, a spokesperson for the company said Meta is “constantly evaluating our policies to help make our platforms safer for everyone.”

See What Others Are Saying: (Mashable) (The New York Post) (Oversight Committee Decision)

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Amazon Labor Union Receives Official Union Certification

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3 weeks ago

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January 12, 2023

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The company already plans to appeal the decision.

Amazon Labor Union’s Victory 

The National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday certified the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) Staten Island election from April, despite Amazon’s objections. 

After Staten Island staffers won the vote to unionize by 500 votes in the spring of 2022, Amazon quickly filed a slew of objections, claiming that the ALU had improperly influenced the election. Amazon pushed for the results to be overturned. 

Now, the National Labor Relations Board has dismissed Amazon’s allegations and certified the election. This certification gives legitimacy to the ALU and puts Amazon in a position to be penalized should they decide not to bargain with the union in good faith. 

“We’re demanding that Amazon now, after certification, meet and bargain with us,” ALU attorney Seth Goldstein said to Motherboard regarding the certification. “We’re demanding bargaining, and if we need to, we’re going to move to get a court order enforcing our bargaining rights. It’s outrageous that they’ve been violating federal labor while they continue to do so.”

Negotiate or Appeal 

Amazon has until Jan. 25 to begin bargaining with the ALU, or the online retailer can appeal the decision by the same deadline. The company has already announced its plan to appeal. 

“As we’ve said since the beginning, we don’t believe this election process was fair, legitimate, or representative of the majority of what our team wants,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel, said in a statement.

This win comes after two recent defeats in ALU’s unionization efforts. The union lost an election at a facility in Albany and another in Staten Island. 

ALU’s director Chris Smalls told Yahoo! Finance that he is unconcerned about these losses.

“For us, whatever campaign is ready to go, the Amazon Labor Union is going to throw their support behind it, no matter what…We know that it’s going to take collective action for Amazon to come to the table,” he told the outlet. “So, for us, it’s never unsuccessful. These are growing pains, and we’re going to fight and continue to grow.”

See what others are saying: (Vice) (NPR) (Bloomberg)

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