Facebook Bans Holocaust Denial On its Platform (axios.com) 229
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Monday that the tech giant would be expanding its hate speech policies to ban any content that "denies or distorts the Holocaust." From a report: Zuckerberg was caught flat-footed in a 2018 interview with Kara Swisher, then host of the Recode Decode podcast, when he said that he didn't believe Facebook should take down Holocaust denial content because "I think there are things that different people get wrong," even if unintentionally. Zuckerberg quickly clarified his statement at the time, emailing Swisher that "I personally find Holocaust denial deeply offensive, and I absolutely didn't intend to defend the intent of people who deny that." "Our goal with fake news is not to prevent anyone from saying something untrue -- but to stop fake news and misinformation spreading across our services." Starting today, if people search for the Holocaust on Facebook, the company will start directing them to authoritative sources to get accurate information. In a blog post explaining the policy, Facebook's VP of content policy Monika Bickert says, "Enforcement of these policies cannot happen overnight. There is a range of content that can violate these policies, and it will take some time to train our reviewers and systems on enforcement," she writes. "We are grateful to many partners for their input and candor as we work to keep our platform safe." "I've struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimizing or denying the horror of the Holocaust. 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. Drawing the right lines between what is and isn't acceptable speech isn't straightforward, but with the current state of the world, I believe this is the right balance," Zuckerberg wrote today.
Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
We're in the first generation of social medial. It tool literally generations to come up with the social, legal and political frameworks for mitigating and managing the impact of printing presses on the world. The internet will need about as much time, I guess.
That aside, this seems an overdue step.
Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. It'll be great when media platforms decide what is true and untrue, and censor everyone's content accordingly.
Then we as a people will live in a Utopia where we never get subjected to anything untrue or fake.
Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
We’ve given all that up for the immediate gratification of being “liked”, and for a very small number of individuals to become unimaginably rich.
Re: Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
No. My Facebook feed is not the NYT and should not be subjected to the same standards. It's beyond insane to even compare the two.
Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. My Facebook feed is not the NYT and should not be subjected to the same standards. It's beyond insane to even compare the two.
The only problem here is that you use the NYT for your news source, which I am not saying is wrong, and Facebook for social media. Some people, not me, now use Facebook as their primary news source. It is their one place to see friends AND get their News and what is going on in the world, their New York Times. Now, I don't believe this is right, but when you have a platform so open that people can share "News" it starts to become a news outlet.
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True, and it's a good point. But the same could be said of nosy grannies talking across neighborhood fence lines. In many communities, they are the primary source of "news". We don't regulate what they tell each other.
I'm aware the analogy isn't perfect, and I am recognizing your point. However I am also pointing out that just because someone's business takes on a news-like character does not mean we should empower them to become de-facto censors.
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The problem being, as soon as a business takes on a news-like character, they are becoming de-facto censors. They publish what they think is important to their world view (rightly or wrongly), and people that access that information source will be influenced by it.
In your grannies talking across fences analogy, they are the de-facto censors at that point. Information that they don't want to be presented isn't, and it's buried. Sometimes it may be that they don't actually know the information (so it's eff
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The fact that you choose to look at and potentially read the NYT for news, elevates you above (c) two thirds of the American adult population.
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And yet the average reader of the NYTimes thinks that the whackos who were plotting to kidnap the Michigan governor were right-wingers. In realty, they are a mix of anarchists and anti-trumpers...
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We’ve given all that up for the immediate gratification of being “liked”, and for a very small number of individuals to become unimaginably rich.
This is one of the great travesties of the 21 century. Traditional media has been eviscerated by the 24 hour news cycle and the immediacy of the internet and editorial oversight is all but dead, even at many large news orgs. Today the majority of reporting is either so shallow as to not even pass muster as a /. summary, or essentially opinion content posing as news. I'd love to blame one side or the other but both are guilty of it. Sadly the media has discovered there is more money in click-bait headlines a
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Where the past generations we had the Publishing Companies decide what was true and not, before that the Scribes would decide what was true or not.
The point of Science and Philosophy is a way to create a framework to judge what is True and Untrue, There is a tone of evidence supporting the idea the Holocaust existed and it happened. Compared to Conspiracy theories which are backed up by Faulty Logical Arguments. For an Educated Scribe, A publishing company with a reputation to maintain, or a Social Media
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There's obvious limits to the First Amendment, like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater - do you have a problem with that?
A media platform is subject to even less stringent rules about what they can ban or not, but banning Holocaust denial is a no-brainer. Unless you're a Holocaust denialist, I suppose. In that case, I guess you have a right to be upset. Let us know how that works out for you.
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The question is "will it be better than what we have now?"
No one ever promised you "great".
Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Denying facts, no. I agree.
Allowing the public discourse to be moderated for facts by a private entity?
That's unrelated, and I can't believe we're ready to start listing things we're happy to have them act like truth arbiters over.
Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not happy about this happening, but the problem is with Social Media, It is extremely easy to post garbage information and make it seem professionally collected. We lack tools and many lack the education to properly judge information off of media. As well social media is not discourse, it is tribalism. If you are right leaning, you are going to get more right leaning stuff, that makes you feel like you are in the majority and everyone except for a few Crazy Liberals who are out to hurt you. If you are left leaning, then you feel like your views are the majority with a few crazy Conservatives making up crap because they want to see you hurt.
This isn't discourse, you are being fed what you want to see. So unfortunately these social media companies who are giving you what you want to see, probably should put some limits on how stupid they want to be.
Re: Good. (Score:2)
That sm has an echo chamber effect is true. This is not the solution.
Re: Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
What would be the solution then?
A bad solution implemented well. Is often better than a Good Solution not Implemented or Implemented poorly.
Problem: Misinformation is being popularized in some echo chambers. Leading people to begin to do more drastic and dangerous activities, because they feel they are facing a threat that really isn't there, from a group of people who is there.
Social Media Sites business model is around giving people access to data (and Ads) that they want to see, and not give them extra stuff they do not want to see. This is mostly for the people selling Ads because exposing the right target will have a much higher response rate than just a general distribution.
Blocking select data after some review to block it, is an easier solution than trying to change a companies business model around, for only a few topic cause such a dangerous level.
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Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
My possible solution, libel laws, references and chain of trust, anybody should be able to state their opinion as long as they state it is their opinion, if you state as fact you should able to back that fact up or you should be open to prosecution, just as you are now, if you claim person X is a con man then back it up or face prosecution for liable, it should not be facebook's job to do this.
We should change our writing style to have links back to sources, and rating systems for those sources, is it peer reviewed, was it anonymous or was a known trusted source. We should teach people how to validate sources, so they can think for themselves.
Also I find it ironic the media and politicans are complaining so much, years of slanted views, deceptive statements, and now they are suprised that nobody trusts them. We have built a society in which you can deceive as much as you want as long and are not technically lying. Trust is an oil that keeps society running smoothly but once its gone, it is very hard to get back. Look the government can't even get people to wear masks in a pandemic. We are reaping the consequence of this acceptance of dishonesty, which started long before social media. I don't think social media is the cause, but it magnify the effect.
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The problem is more widespread than just social media (although that's exasperating the situation). There's also a "both sides" effect which leads media companies to try to show both sides of a topic and give them equal weight even if one side has a mountain of proof and the other side is a crazy conspiracy theory. For example, if a media company covers vaccines, they'll invariably have a quote from someone claiming that vaccines cause autism with toxic mercury and Bill Gates microchips. This will be given
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Journalism 101: "If someone says it's raining & another person says it's dry. It's not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true."
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He's making shit up.
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I really wish they'd ban anonymous posting here again, it kept the mentally ill ones from posting garbage like that.
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The AC means that the troll wanted to publish its trolly subject line. That promptly got hidden at -1. Unfortunately Rick Schumann reposted it, and that subject is now sitting at +2.
Don't do that.
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Except they tried that and it didn't, and we still had walls of swastikas and that spam post.
It only hurts the people who want to discuss serious shit, not the trolls.
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Denying facts, no. I agree.
That's the rub - plenty of sites exist that deny facts, or chose what facts too present to push a POV.
Allowing the public discourse to be moderated for facts by a private entity?
The problem, IMHO, is people allow private organizations, who can exert complete control over the platform, to be used for public discourse.
That's unrelated, and I can't believe we're ready to start listing things we're happy to have them act like truth arbiters over.
The challenge, as I see it, is how do you allow them to maintain a discourse while not holding them liable for what is said? The US has attempted to do that but the companies come under fire for allowing speech that is disagreeable, to some (or a lot) of the public;
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Only within the tight constraint of people choosing to use that particular entity to have their semi-public discourse. If you want to talk on Facebook, yes, you're opting into Facebook's rules. If you want to talk on your website, your rules are what applies. And other forums have other rules.
The only way we can get everyone under one roof so that a central "truth arbiter" can exist, is if we use government force to make everyone us
Re: Good. (Score:2, Interesting)
A dumb argument. The fact that socmed companies are de facto monopolies with total control over what can and can't be said might not be legally relevant given the precise formulation of the constitution, but I would argue that the intent of the constitution was to avoid just this kind of thing. The idea of a private sector entity with as much or more power than the federal government to control speech was outside the consideration of the founding fathers, but it's clear their intent was to protect the peopl
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A dumb argument. The fact that socmed companies are de facto monopolies with total control over what can and can't be said might not be legally relevant given the precise formulation of the constitution
So are the newspapers, TV stations and radio. Except that it's even worse for radio where ONE company holds the majority of the market.
Read the constitution dipshit (Score:2)
Here I'll get you started: Congress shall make no law...
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The Framers probably never imagined that one man could own all the printing presses. We can imagine it today, even if it has not happened, yet.
There are plenty of places to take hate speech where it is permitted, like 8kun. You're not under Zuck's thumb, unless you're an advertiser.
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We're in the first generation of social medial. It tool literally generations to come up with the social, legal and political frameworks for mitigating and managing the impact of printing presses on the world. The internet will need about as much time, I guess.
That aside, this seems an overdue step.
You mean this is a pointless step.
I'm sorry, but attempting to legitimize any data sitting on social media platforms, is akin to herding insane cats. Social media, is too far gone. It's time to separate the fact from the chaff, and at least attempt to stand up a completely separate platform (e.g. Wikipedia) that is not within the fucking cesspool of social humanity.
It's time to define social media as no more than the mindless entertainment that it is. It is NOT, nor should it ever be, a "printing press.
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Unfortunately, while social media isn't actually a printing press, it basically is acting like one anyway.
Printing presses revolutionized communication because it lowered the bar for mass communications. Before it, you had to be sufficiently wealthy to hire dozens of scribes to recopy your text, or higher hundreds of people to go yell your message in the streets. Both were activities limited to the rich.
Then with the printing press, you didn't need to be rich anymore. Probably still had to have at least som
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attempt to stand up a completely separate platform (e.g. Wikipedia) that is not within the fucking cesspool of social humanity.
Wikipedia itself is already lost, and no longer serves to reflect even objective truth.
While this may be true, at least Wikipedia is still boring enough to not attract the worst of humanity.
There used to be a reason we actually issued credentials to those who inform the public. Not anymore, so perhaps this is the best we can do now.
A self-informed society is a delusional society, so we've got that going for us.
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Political correctness versus civility (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look back in history there's endless of examples of counter culture ideas that eventually became the accepted wisdom. Opposition to slavery, women voting. etc...
And there are ideas that clearly need to be snuffed out like Holocaust Denial.
A good quesiton is who should decide these things. The holocaust one seems rock solid. But what if the question was about people claiming that blacks are mentally equal to white people. In the early 1800's you'd be an offensive radical and these days it's offensive to say the reverse. So if we'd had facebook, snuffing out the mental-deficiency deniers then we'd never have moved on to the common wisdom we have now about mental equality.
So how is facebook deciding what's right thinking and society deciding what is right thinking different. In one case it's a corporation and the other it's society self-determining. Democracy verses autocracy.
It sure is a lot more efficient to have one person by fiat determine what is right or wrong. But it may not be the best way overall. For every truly correct good (like holocaust denial) there might be dozens of incorrect decisions.
This is not an argument that we should just say facebook is an agnostic communication service and society can use it as it would any communication service to decide what is right and wrong. Facebook is not agnostic, it amplifies. If puts you in a bubble. You see what you want to see. What's wrong with amplicifaction is that small voices can drown out larger voices, or seem equal. Thus people can't assess concesus with their peers. It undoes the process of forming concensus that societies use to slowly evolve from one state of opinion to another.
I do not know what the right answer to this is.
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If you look back in history there's endless of examples of counter culture ideas that eventually became the accepted wisdom. Opposition to slavery, women voting. etc...
Actually that would be when actual wisdom and common sense, finally defeated corruption.
Opposition to slavery made no sense to the enslaved. Opposing women voting was nothing more than a power play by men. Both are examples of corrupt power, corrupting.
And there are ideas that clearly need to be snuffed out like Holocaust Denial....I do not know what the right answer to this is.
Yes, you do. When the problem is stupid gullible people, you don't blame the microphone or the loudspeaker. You educate (or eradicate) stupid gullible people.
Or you try and corral those insane cats to an identified part of the internet. Say social media
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Just a suggestion to throw out there:
Maybe we should tolerate all *opinions*, but not tolerate all *statements of fact*? So if someone wants to state that slavery is either good or bad, those are unprovable opinions about morality, both should be tolerated (even though you and I are pretty sure one is morally wrong). But if someone wants to state that the Holocaust didn't occur, you and I can agree that is an incorrect statement of fact, so discussion forums should be free to ban it.
This (if well executed)
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self-determination implies personal responsibility and that takes effort, and lots of it
there' s a good many people who can't or won't do this and instead take the easier way of shirking responsibility; this is usually manifested in proclaiming what others 'should' or 'ought' to be doing
the idea that any gov't or private entity is better placed and informed than myself for determining my own life is repulsive; I believe it's also un-American and un-human to put individual rights below an
What about minimizes? (Score:4, Insightful)
ban any content that 'denies or distorts the Holocaust.'
These days it is very popular to claim that people who disagree with you ideologically are Nazgul (Slashdot lameness filter does not like me using the German N word).
That itself greatly distorts to Holocaust, by minimizing what actually occurred by equating some trivial first world debate to an organization putting people in gas chambers.
So will calling others Nazgul also be banned and blocked?
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Considering you can't use the N word yourself I think you answered your own question.
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Slashdot is imposing a "lameness" filter when using certain words or phrases. Not sure when it was added or what it encompasses as I have only been accused of being lame once by Slashdot (but daily by my friends). But presumably if he changes the "German N word" to "N***" then it gets flagged as lame and you can't submit. And indeed, I can't submit until I add the "***".
Different reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't idle speculation. Facebook has been used for some pretty fucked up shit down in Brazil that we found out about in an info leak from one of their ex-employees. And FB has been tied to wide scale ethnic violence in several countries.
That said, the main reason they're doing this is they've drawn the ire of both political parties. The right wing doesn't like that young people can be politically active on it and the left wing doesn't like that domestic terrorists can be politically active on it. So both sides of he aisle are about to come down hard.
It's similar to what happened to the video game industry in the 90s or the credit card industry in the 2000s. They're trying to self regulate before the government does it for them.
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/. banned N_A_Z_I because of trolls.
Slashdot's filter is getting fucking retarded (let's see if this get's through). The other day I literally couldn't tell someone that there's a battery size smaller than AAA because apparently adding the 4th A makes my entire 3 paragraph post of words look "too much like ASCII art".
You also get hit by the lameness filter when talking about DNSSEC in the context of many other technologies because throwing too many capitalised acronyms in one post, however nerdy, or however technical or relevant it is to the
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At least in video games you are usually killing *azis.
The complaints from Twitter *azis about Wolfenstein being all about murdering them are hilarious.
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ban any content that 'denies or distorts the Holocaust.'
These days it is very popular to claim that people who disagree with you ideologically are Nazgul (Slashdot lameness filter does not like me using the German N word).
That itself greatly distorts to Holocaust, by minimizing what actually occurred by equating some trivial first world debate to an organization putting people in gas chambers.
So will calling others Nazgul also be banned and blocked?
Are we serious here? We can't even use the term Grammar N@zi anymore?
Slashdot, the fuck happened to you? When did you become afraid of certain combinations of letters?
And of course, the obvious question, what in the FUCK would you like us to use instead of the word N@zi when describing that group of people?
Ah, nothing like censorship for Stupid's sake...
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The lameness filter should possibly just pop up as a warning, then if you post anyway just flag the post as lame. But with such a relevant topic here, it's a bit absurd to try to discuss the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei without using the more common English abbreviation. Even the German NSDAP won't be well understood outside of Germany. Maybe Slashdot itself needs a lameness flag on it.
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The lameness filter should possibly just pop up as a warning...
For what? To self-identify how lame a lameness filter is? Stupid, is stupid. I mean, what in the fuck is a "lameness filter" anyway? Sounds like some childish crap we should have left back on the elementary school playground.
And it's just a word. One that has an accurate and valid definition and use case. "Sticks" and "Stones" turned into 4-letter terrorist threats to a generation who considers an unabridged dictionary a weapon.
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Given that they aren't banning actual flag waving swastika tattoo nazguls from their platform I doubt they care about this.
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So what you're saying everyone who denies the Holocaust is not a Nazgul? Sure, but is the important thing formal membership in the party, or spreading the party's lies?
Censorship blocks correction (Score:2)
So what you're saying everyone who denies the Holocaust is not a Nazgul?
I'd say that's probably the case, some people have other motives I think. Some people just like to pretend some history does not exist, because they don't believe people could do something... some people are just confused.
Sure, but is the important thing formal membership in the party, or spreading the party's lies?
I find it extremely important to let people attempt to spread lies online for two reasons:
1) You can see what people belie
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Nobody is saying preventing people from spreading lies online. The question is whether Facebook has the right to keep them of *its* site.
Wrong way (Score:2, Informative)
It was ordinary Germans with views not too different to today's Trump supporters
No, Germany's brownshirts are really mostly like Antifa, right down to the hatred of jews that is all spreading from the Democrats... not to mention things like statue toppling, all preludes to ethnic cleansing forepeople who do not believe as you do.
Sorry, but look to your own pals when looking for the dangers of a new Reich.
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It's not an easy decision. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not an easy decision. If you ban holocaust denial, do you then ban common Turkish denials of the Armenian genocide for example? If not, why would one population mass killing be any different than another? Etc.
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The Turks don't deny that there were mass killings of Armenians. They just deny that it was a planned and deliberate policy.
Holocaust deniers can't make that argument, since the planning and deliberation, starting with the Wannsee Conference [wikipedia.org], are well documented.
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Why can we not question a historical event? (Score:2, Insightful)
Any other event in history can be questioned as new evidence comes forth. Why not for this? Why should there be a difference?
Re:Why can we not question a historical event? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the differences with this one is that it happened practically yesterday, and there are still many many people alive who witnessed it and watched their families murdered. What evidence can counteract that? I wasn't going to comment on the post because I'm not in favor of censorship. But I felt this questions shouldn't go unanswered.
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Palestine has a right to exist, and existed before Israel. The genocide going on this moment against Palestinians is well-documented, yet it is not stopped. It was not the Palestinians who put the jews in camps under WW2, so why should they suffer now?
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Not only is this non-responsive to the post to which you replied (mine), but I'm not sure you realize that you've gone the extra step that's not normally needed to associate your claimed Israeli actions as those of Jews.
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There is no special right for a nation to exist. And if there way, why would age matter?
Human rights violations against the Palestinian people is a crisis of our time because the superpowers of the world not only ignore it, but in the same breath claim to be defenders of the free world.
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It was 75 years ago, that's an entire human lifetime. Know what happened "yesterday"? 9/11, Hong Kong protests, Charlie Hedbo, Columbine, Tiananmen, Sandy Hook, ISIS, and Swine Flu. People involved in each of those events are "alive who witnessed it" and watched their friends and families die.
Yes, in terms of body count these are small potatoes, but the list of tragedies should not be treated like a scoreboard.
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The evidence that millions of people were murdered is undeniable at this point. The reason it's such an important issue is that holocaust denial is used to promote modern neo-*azism.
It's a gateway, they spin out the old "you are being lied to buy we can help you wake up" red pill line, starting with holocaust denial. From there it develops to "they want you to feel guilty" and of course "they" are Jews.
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Sounds like you might own some jewelry made from tooth fillings.
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I applaud this, but I wish I didn't. (Score:4, Informative)
Today we have a big problem with the implementation of Free Speech, and Political Speech.
Every stupid thing that comes up is twisted into some political statement. There are still survivors from the Holocaust today, we also have a lot of documentation on what happened and where. We have photographic and video evidence of the time... However there are political groups, where their stances have these facts that get in the way of their ideology. So they twist it around to make it seem like it didn't happen, it wasn't that bad, or it was for their benefit.... So because they have tied this to their political ideology, it has moved from just a lie, or stupid conspiracy theory which can be normally blocked, because it is obviously false, to Political Speech which should have much more protection.
Anti-Vax, Flat Earthers, Holocaust Deniers, Human caused Global Warming Deniers, Creationist, and Anti-GMO activists.
Now I want to see open Political Speech of different ideas. However these ideas should be backed up with facts, not having a fact discredited, or conspiracy theory explained just to make their pieces fit.
and apple better look out from doing the same as (Score:2)
and apple better look out from doing the same as stuff like limited Free Speech, and Political Speech to only groups they want may kill there app store lockin.
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Apparently, wanting to have facts and evidence is in itself a political viewpoint?
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My sincere hope is that Facebook can become a playground for simpletons. I'm glad Zuck is willing to step up and look after these poor souls who clearly can't even look after themselves.
The way to unlock the door to free speech is simply to click away from the site.
Unintentionally? (Score:2)
'"I think there are things that different people get wrong," even if unintentionally.'
Stupidity comes in many shades, always unintentionally.
Is it our own insecurity? (Score:2)
I always thought that the way to win a discussion was a good argument. Not banning the other viewpoint from discussion. And I think we should apply that principle everywhere. To fight both 'holocaust deniers' as 'socialism deniers'.
I think it boils down to our own insecurity: we don't quite know the good arguments to refute holocaust
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Plenty of evidence exists to show that the death counts were definitely in the millions, not the few hundred thousands as you claim. You are grossly misleading yourself.
It is true that there are larger genocides, in particular, that more people died under Stalin than in the Jewish holocaust. However, the Jewish holocaust is large--for instance, another recent genocide was
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Does it make it somehow less evil if there were only 5 million victims instead of 6 million?
It was a huge percentage of the Jewish people living in Europe at the time, they were guilty of no crime, and they were targeted largely if not exclusively because they were Jewish. The descendants, ethnically and/or religiously, of the children of Abraham whom God chose as His own.
Genocide by definition. Regardless of the body count.
As was Holodomor, and the Cultural Revolution, and abortion on demand. Superficia
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It would only be holocaust denial if you're trying to make a suffering Olympics where only the largest pile of dead gets to complain.
What idiot? (Score:2)
What idiot would be looking up Holocaust information on Facebook?
Or news? Or anything other than people that have an account?
I cannot fathom that. It is no wonder things are in such a mess.
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What idiot would be looking up Holocaust information on Facebook?
Don't know much about Americans, do ya?
FB wants to tell you how to think (Score:2)
Tomorrow they're going to tell you what to think about religion and politics.
Mark: why don't you try letting people post what they want to post?
Obligatory (Score:2)
Apologies in advance.
First they came for Qanon, but I was not a anonymous,
then they came for Holocaust deniers, but I did not deny
then they came for Vaginal Rocks proponents, but I don't have a vagina,
Go ahead, add your own lines.
Morally Bankrupt (Score:2)
Holocaust was real but questions are good (Score:4, Interesting)
I am certain the Holocaust happened - my best friend in high school's parents were in a concentration camp as children. I have no doubt at all.
But... it is a historical event and I NEVER want to restrict people's ability to discuss historical events. Look how our opinions of Columbus, and the British Empire have changed. I don't want to end up in a situation where history cannot be discussed.
I know FB is private, but it has become the defacto public forum. I strongly oppose all attempts to limit conversations. The only exception I would make is for information that presents a clear an immediate health risk- and even then I'm uneasy.
Devil's advocate here... (Score:2)
An example that comes to mind is a CNN interview from several years ago of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (then president of Iran, whose last name I probably just misspelled). He was asked by his interviewer (likely Larry King IIRC) why he was at a holocaust deniers conference. His response was along the lines of "I don't deny th
Armenian genocide denial is ok though (Score:3)
So now you can't deny Jews were killed by Germans, but it's ok to claim the Turks never did anything to the Armenians? And this policy comes from a Jewish man?
Hmmm. One might reasonably suggest Zuckerberg is a racist.
Lameness filter (Score:2)
...if you raise any questions about the Holocaust.
We have descended to the level of Facebook.
I grieve for ... (Score:2)
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if he does nothing, it's like he himself is helping people hating on jews...
Allowing someone to speak is in no way equivalent to agreeing with them.
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You cannot deny someone taking a dump,
but that does not mean they get to rub it in your face In the Name of Freedom.
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If you deny one person's lawful speech but allow another person's, you endorse what the other person is saying. Claiming that you do not agree or endorse someone you give a platform to only works if you let everybody have a turn on the soapbox.
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If you deny one person's lawful speech but allow another person's, you endorse what the other person is saying. Claiming that you do not agree or endorse someone you give a platform to only works if you let everybody have a turn on the soapbox.
Sure, that's kinda the point of private property; I have no obligation to present a POV that I disagree with.
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if he does nothing, it's like he himself is helping people hating on jews...
Allowing someone to speak is in no way equivalent to agreeing with them.
Allowing someone to speak is in no way equivalent to building them a platform on which to speak and selling ad space on banners over that platform visible to the people who come to see the speaker.
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It's the Streisand-effect, and coincidentally Streisand is also... (It's more to do with anosognosia.)
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Such a pickle! Allow for anti-Semitic holocaust denial to flourish and spread, or give existing anti-Semites one more reason to hate a Jew they not only hate by default but also for many other reasons stemming from other conspiracy theories they believe in? Truly a gruelling conundrum that will require extensive research and contemplation to solve.
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Truly a grueling conundrum that will require extensive research and contemplation to solve.
No conundrum at all. Just like in "The Godfather", all decisions are strictly business.
Zuckerberg will choose the option that he thinks is more profitable for him.
It's simple as that.
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So you're saying he'll be acting like the stereotype of a Jew?
More like the stereotype of any greedy tech CEO or MBA these days . . .
. . . regardless of religion, race or creed . . .
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Very few will argue that concentration camps existed or that mass extermination happened. It's the total numbers that are contested.
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Yeah we all know the Germans never kept meticulous records or anything...