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NEW YORK: Holocaust survivors entered a crusade Wednesday (July 29) in which they plan to upload videos to Facebook urging CEO Mark Zuckerberg to remove posts from the site that deny the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
Survivors from around the world, Anne Frank’s half-sister, recorded 30-second messages that were then posted on social media, Instagram and Twitter, with the hashtag #NoDenyingIt.
Online crusade occurs when many advertisers are boycotting Facebook as part of a call for more competitive action against poisonous and incendiary content that encourages violence and hatred.
“I’ve lost my family. Many, many members of my family. There’s no denying it! Eliminate Holocaust denial from Facebook,” says Eva Schloss, Frank’s half-sister, in her video.
Other survivors who contributed to the mission come with 84-year-old Serge Klarsfeld, a prominent Nazi hunter who helped locate and denounce Nazi war criminals.
The crusade organized through the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany.
The non-profit organization is the reimbursement of the German government and the restitution of Jewish assets stolen through the Nazis.
Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, sparked controversy in 2018 by saying that Facebook did not delete posts that denied the Nazis killing six million Jews.
In an interview with the Recode generation’s online page, he said that if Facebook were committed to preventing the spread of fake news, he wouldn’t delete the posts just because they were.
He said that although he found that Holocaust denial was “deeply offensive,” he said he did think the boneless ones were “intentionally wrong.”
Critics have criticized Zuckerberg, saying the comments can incite hatred and violence and emphasizing that Holocaust denial is “a quintessential false news.”
Facebook said it was cutting posts that deny the Holocaust in countries where such messages are illegal, such as Germany, France and Poland.
In the United States and Britain, where Holocaust denial is not illegal, due to freedom of expression legislation, Facebook monitors those posts to see if they violate the site’s guidelines.
“We have any message that celebrates, defends or tries to justify the Holocaust,” a spokesman said.
Nearly 1,000 advertisers, adding giant brands such as Coca-Cola, Hershey and Adidas, have temporarily suspended advertising on Facebook, saying the main social networking site wants to monitor hate speech.
Earlier this month, organizers promised to continue the boycott, saying that top executives, adding Zuckerberg, had proposed significant actions to curb hateful content.
Facebook has categorically refused to determine the facts about political discourse and has a largely passive policy on the comments of world leaders, but says it is determined to liberate the site from hate speech.
Recently, Facebook gave the impression of making changes, adding the removal of an announcement of Trump’s crusade with a Nazi symbol.
The company also said it would mark publications through world leaders who violate their policies, even if they are available because they are “worthy of interest.”
This month, an independent audit commissioned through Facebook in 2018 that the Californian giant had violated civil rights, added by allowing Trump posts that violate network values.