Commentary: Facebook's Holocaust denial a small step in complex fight against online hate
“If Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem,’” actor Sacha Baron Cohen said at the Anti-Defamation League’s Never is Now anti-Semitism summit last year.
He is not wrong.
In that forceful 24-minute address, Cohen used his charisma and wit to convince millions of what academics have said for years: Despite its benefits, social media has become a hotbed of intolerance, hate and bigotry that has gone unregulated for far too long.
This is why I applaud Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for banning Holocaust denial on his platform. The policy change, though, is only one small step in a complex fight against extremism online.
By providing immediate gratification in the form of likes, reactions, and shares, and enabling users to spew vitriol anonymously, platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are a breeding ground for extremism. More worrisome is that these extremists look to target young people who are perhaps less media savvy and more susceptible to believing the first thing they read no matter how outlandish the content.
While Facebook will now refer those who search for the Holocaust to “authoritative sources,” that step is not enough. Hate groups are not deterred if a post gets removed. They will just post another, most likely under a different username. Or, they utilize their own coded language to fly under the radar. The number “88,” for example, refers to “Heil Hitler” in extremists’ code.
Recently, far-right extremists including white supremacists, anti-Semitic groups, racists and neo-Nazis have also started using the “dog whistle.” Alarmed by law enforcement attempts to find them online and by social media platforms’ efforts to remove their posts, they try to apply the new language of codes and doublespeak. In a movement they call “Operation Google,” these groups find ways to implement systematic use of innocuous words to stand in for offensive racial slurs, avoiding detection by artificial intelligence-driven search engines.
Technology cannot be the only tool employed in the fight against hateful content, as far-right groups also use visual cues to remain hidden in plain sight. By utilizing cues such as Pepe the Frog, the rainbow clown wig (a jab at the LGBTQ movement) and terms such as Honk Honk (code for Heil Hitler), far-right users can flourish freely in mainstream social media pages.
Facebook is only part of the problem. With hate groups targeting younger users on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, other social media companies must follow Facebook’s lead in actively curtailing the spread of harmful messages.
Hate groups have learned how to outsmart the system. Can Facebook’s Holocaust denial ban be effective when extremists are determined to spread their message through new methods? What can be done to counter their influence?
To enact meaningful change, social media platforms need to institute a set of multifaceted measures to minimize the presence of hate groups. They must leverage both their technology and personnel to monitor, fact-check and remove offensive content.
The general public, too, has an obligation to teach the next generation how to be more media-savvy. Average citizens should know how to recognize hateful content when they see it, report extremist posts, and not go further down the rabbit hole of continuing to read this content and giving it greater exposure. It is unrealistic to expect children to cut themselves off of social media, which means that parents and educators must do everything in their power to ensure that children navigate these platforms in a responsible manner.
More counter-campaigns against propaganda should also be implemented. Governments in Muslim-majority countries, for example, have unleashed powerful digital campaigns against ISIS to discourage youths from enlisting.
As for those who are not Jewish and believe a Holocaust denial ban is inconsequential to them, there is an important truism to bear in mind: Hatred of Jews almost never exists in a vacuum. Anti-Semites often hate many other demographic groups and rub shoulders with misogynists, xenophobes and homophobes.
Free speech is not limitless and should not provide a license for incitement. As Cohen said, “The ultimate aim of society should be to make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed, and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray. If we make that our aim — if we prioritize truth over lies, tolerance over prejudice, empathy over indifference, and experts over ignoramuses — then maybe, just maybe, we can stop the greatest propaganda machine in history.”
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Gabriel Weimann (Weimann@com.haifa.ac.il) is a professor of communication at the University of Haifa, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland, and the author of nine books, including “Terrorism in Cyberspace: The Next Generation.”
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