Facebook Puts Holocaust Denial Groups in Top Search Results
The social-media titan’s bad PR continues this week, days after Zuck said his website could not censor Holocaust denial.
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Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is burying Holocaust denial at the bottom of search results, but search results say otherwise.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg cited Holocaust denial in a Recode interview published Wednesday as the kind of content Facebook would allow on the site, but specifically avoid promoting on users’ news feeds.
“That doesn’t mean that we have a responsibility to make it widely distributed in News Feed,” Zuckerberg said in the interview.
But Business Insider reported Friday that Facebook still puts groups devoted to denying the idea that six million died in the Holocaust among the top search results for searches on the site, as well as in searches through the groups section of the site.
Facebook’s handling of Holocaust denial groups is the latest in a string of woes for the social-media giant, which has been pressed over whether it should take a more active role in policing its user content.
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On Tuesday, members of the House Judiciary Committee grilled a Facebook representative, with—among other moments—Democrats complaining that conspiracy site InfoWars is still allowed on the platform, and Republicans criticizing the presence of a Facebook group where users praised the shooter who attempted to kill Republicans at a congressional baseball game practice in 2017.
Zuckerberg’s surprising commitment to allowing Holocaust denial content on Facebook made headlines after the Recode interview was published. While Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, called such material “deeply offensive,” he also suggested that Holocaust deniers are genuinely confused about the historical facts, and that Facebook should not arbitrate the intention of wrongheaded or false beliefs.
“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,” Zuckerberg said. “I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong.”
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