On the occasion of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has called on Facebook to remove all the content that denies the existence of the holocaust since they consider it hate speech and not simple “misinformation”.
On May 20, 1940, the largest Nazi concentration camp began operating. Five years later, and approximately 1.1 million people executed (the majority, Jews), the Soviet army liberated the concentration camp on January 27, 1945.
Every year the liberation of Auschwitz and its multiple complexes is remembered; but even 75 years later, there are still groups of people who deny that the holocaust happened and the Auschwitz Museum wants to see holocaust denial banned from online discussion.
Although this information is well documented, some people deny this part of Jewish history.
Forgetting it, or questioning the number of people who died, is said to belittle the lives of those executed, and even further, some use the argument that the holocaust never happened as a way to discredit the Jews, the group says.
However, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, does not consider it necessary to prohibit such messages, since, for him, it is just false information and shouldn’t be persecuted.
Facebook’s refusal
On Facebook, it is common to find groups where the veracity of the holocaust is discussed, as well as groups that deny that it has occurred.
In the past, the same happened with platforms such as YouTube or TikTok, until they decided to completely block this content.
However, although Mark Zuckerberg is Jewish (and accepts that he finds it offensive to deny the holocaust), he believes that this content should not be censored.
“I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong … It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent,” Zuckerberg said last year.
