In a weird twist, Facebook’s initiative to remove Holocaust denial content may actually be suppressing posts intended to raise awareness and knowledge about the Holocaust.

New Facebook policy

In October 2020, Facebook announced it was updating its policy; Holocaust denial, which had previously been labeled ‘misinformation’, would now be banned as hate speech. This reversed that policy advocated by CEO Mark Zuckerberg who, in 2018, defended the rights of Holocaust deniers to air their views on Facebook. He said that in the name of free speech, his platform would not remove posts that were factually inaccurate.

“I’m Jewish and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened,” he told Recode at the time. “I find it deeply offensive. But 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. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong.”

The new policy prohibited any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust. The change in policy led to the removal of  22.5 million pieces of hate speech and the banning of more than 250 white supremacist organizations. The new policy also banned anti-Semitic stereotypes about the collective power of Jews that often depicts them running the world or its major institutions. The policy put in place algorithms that checked new posts as well as posts going back several years. 

The policy change was lauded by Jewish institutions. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) cited a survey that found that 49 percent of American adults under 40 years old were exposed to Holocaust denial or distortion across social media. In its “report card” grading social media platforms on their Holocaust denial policies and response, the ADL reported that four of the major platforms, including Twitter and Reddit, had no explicit policy banning Holocaust denial. 

Same old results

And despite its policy prohibiting Holocaust denial, the ADL found that three months after changing its policy, Facebook (which includes Instagram) did not actually take action against Holocaust denial posts. Facebook responded to this charge by saying it would direct people who search for information about the Holocaust to authoritative sources. 

“Anyone who searches on Facebook for terms associated with either the Holocaust or Holocaust denial will see a message from Facebook encouraging them to connect with credible information about the Holocaust off Facebook,” Guy Rosen, vice president of integrity, said in a blog post.

Algorithms blocking Holocaust education

It is now clear that not only did the new policy not take action against Holocaust denial posts, but it actually resulted in banning posts about the Holocaust that were factual and educational. JTA reported that one day after Facebook announced its new policy, Izabella Tabarovsky,  a Jewish journalist who writes about Soviet Jewry including the Holocaust in Soviet territories, received a message from Facebook informing her that a 2019 post promoting an article she had written for the Forward on Holocaust remembrance was being removed for violating Facebook’s “Community Standards on hate speech.” There was no way for Tabarovsky to appeal the decision.

The article titled “Most Jews Weren’t Murdered In Death Camps. It’s Time To Talk About The Other Holocaust” related how millions of Jews were killed outside the concentration camps as part of the Nazi’s Final Solution. 

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… https://t.co/ftoiGJjtd2 pic.twitter.com/09iFWer971

— Izabella Tabarovsky (@IzaTabaro) October 13, 2020

Last week, after JTA inquired about the post and more than six months after it had been removed, Facebook restored it to the platform.

“It’s just crazy when you’re dealing with a robot that can’t tell the difference between Holocaust denial and Holocaust education,” Tabarovsky said. “How did we get to this point as humanity where we’ve outsourced such important decisions to robots? It’s just nuts.”

Similarly, Michelle Stein, the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum’s chief communications officer, told JTA that the museum’s Facebook ads have  often been rejected outright.

JTA reported that many organizations that focus on Holocaust education are reporting similar problems. In March, Facebook deactivated the account of the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies for five days, as well as the accounts of 12 of its employees. When the accounts were restored, a local Facebook spokesperson told a Norwegian publication, “I cannot say whether this is a technical error or a human error.”

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a Holocaust education organization in New York, had a post removed from Facebook in 2018 because it included a photo of emaciated Jewish children. Redfish, an outlet affiliated with the Russian state, said it had three Holocaust remembrance posts, including one with a famous picture of Elie Weisel and others in a concentration camp barracks, taken off Facebook this year.

A Facebook spokesperson told JTA that it uses “a combination of human and automated review” to detect hate speech, and that people will “usually” review the automated decisions. Facebook defines Holocaust denial to include posts that dispute “the fact that it happened, the number of victims, the methods, and the intentionality of it.”

“We do not rely exclusively on specific words or language to distinguish between Holocaust denial and educational content,” the spokesperson told JTA. “We also have escalation teams that can spend more time with content and get additional context in order for us to make a more informed decision.”

The September 2020 survey mentioned earlier also found that 63 percent of American adults under 40 did not know that six million Jews died in the Holocaust. Over half thought the death toll was less than two million. Forty-eight percent were unable to name a concentration camp or ghetto, and 56 could not identify the concentration camp Auschwitz. Roughly one in ten (11%) believed that Jews caused the Holocaust. These alarming findings underscore how important it is to combat Holocaust denial and distortion.