Facebook algorithm 'actively promote' Holocaust denial content: Reports

Social media giant Facebook finds itself at the centre of a new storm as recent analysis revealed that the platform’s algorithm “actively promotes” Holocaust denial content.

The UK-based anti-extremist Institute for Strategic Dialogue led an investigation that revealed that typing ‘holocaust’ in the Facebook search bar brought up only the suggestions of ‘denial’ pages that were further linked to publishers that sell revisionist and denial literature, the Guardian reported on Sunday, August 16. 

The ISD scoured Facebook and discovered at least 36 groups, with the collective followership of 366,068, were generating content that denies the Nazi genocide of World War II. These findings reportedly coincide with the increasing global demands from holocaust survivors to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to remove such materials from the platform. This also comes in the backdrop of the social network's announcement over ban on conspiracy theories about Jewish people ‘controlling the world’. 

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However, Facebook is reported to be still reluctant to categorise Holocaust denial as a form of hate speech which according to ISD is a ‘conceptual blind spot’.

Jacob Davey, ISD’s senior research manager, told the media outlet that Facebook’s decision of allowing such content to remain on the site is ‘framed under the guise’ of securing the important historical debate. But, he added that it skips the reason why people indulge in Holocaust denial in the first place. Davey noted that such pages and posts are ‘deliberate tool’ that is used to delegitimise the horrors faced by Jewish people. 

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Holocaust denial content on Twitter, Reddit and YouTube

The media report has also cited ISD researchers finding the Holocaust denial content being readily available across Twitter, Reddit, and even YouTube. They have identified thousands of pieces of content with the term that is used by the deniers of Nazi genocide ‘holohoax’. There were reportedly 2,300 on Reddit, 19,000 on Twitter and at least 9,500 slices of content on YouTube.

Moreover, all of them have been generated in the last two years. Further analysing the issue revealed that among the top 20 most reshared messages on Twitter that used the same phrase, at least 14 of them contained Holocaust denial. 

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Image Credits: AP