Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Evolving’ Position on Holocaust
Denial
Facebook’s
new moves to stop the lies and conspiracy theories seem more random than
rigorous.
By Kara Swisher
Contributing
Opinion Writer
- Oct. 14, 2020, 3:25 p.m. ET
When Facebook’s founder and chief
executive, Mark Zuckerberg, told me two years ago in
a podcast interview that Holocaust deniers might not mean to lie, my first
instinct was to reply, “That’s completely idiotic.” I managed to stifle myself.
In our interview, I let him explain how
he wanted to govern the giant social media platform he alone controlled.
As he talked, his view of the
proliferation of underbaked conspiracy theories, hoaxes and misinformation on
his site became troubling.
“Look, as abhorrent
as some of this content can be, I do think that it gets down to this principle
of giving people a voice,” he said, while at the very same time noting that
speech that created an unsafe environment might indeed be blocked by Facebook.
Mr. Zuckerberg defended the decision to
allow the views of the persistently vile Alex Jones, whose lies and conspiracy-mongering about
the mass murder of children in the Sandy Hook school shooting had proliferated
all over Facebook at the time and who seemed to delight in breaking all the rules that the company had laid
down. When I asked why Mr. Jones had not been booted off Facebook — which
Facebook insisted it would not do and then did not long after — Mr. Zuckerberg
wanted to change the frame of reference.
To the Holocaust. Uh-oh, I thought.
Still, he persisted.
“I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of
people who deny that the Holocaust happened,” he said.
“Yes, there’s a lot,” I said.
“I find that deeply offensive. But 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. I don’t think
that they’re intentionally getting it
wrong, but I think — —”
I had to interject one bit of sanity to
try to stop this runaway train of thought. “In the case of the Holocaust
deniers, they might be,” I said, before deciding to just let that whopper chug
on by. “But go ahead.”
And go ahead he went,
driving himself right into a wall, with me watching the accident unfold in
quiet horror.
“It’s hard to impugn intent and to
understand the intent,” he said. It is not, I thought.
While he later tried to clarify his
remarks, sending me an email that
said, “I personally find Holocaust denial deeply offensive, and I absolutely
didn’t intend to defend the intent of people who deny that,” it was exactly
what he had done.
And which he continued to do, until Monday, that is, when it finally occurred to Mr.
Zuckerberg that perhaps he had not thought it through and decided Facebook
would now “prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust.”
“I’ve struggled with the tension
between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimizing or
denying the Holocaust,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “My own thinking has
evolved as I’ve seen data showing an increase in anti-Semitic violence, as have
our wider policies on hate speech.”
The move comes just after Facebook
announced last week that it is purging content from
QAnon, the bizarre and growing conspiracy theory movement.
Is this woke Mark a good thing? I am
not sure. This evolving Zuckerberg feels more random than rigorous, based less
on a consistent theory of how to police the platform than playing an endless and
exhausting game; and, more to the point, motivated to look busy because of a
possible change in political power that could spell trouble for the Trump-friendly Facebook. Is this new tune simply being
sung for a coming Biden presidency?
I have no idea. But what is clear is
that Mr. Zuckerberg’s realization of all the ways that social media can
hurt us continues to be painfully slow. The enormous costs of this process,
which have never actually accrued to him, will still be borne by the rest of
us. The world has to repair the damage from the hate that he has allowed to
thrive under the false banner of free speech on the network he built.
Until Mr. Zuckerberg
decides to really run the place, Facebook will remain a perfect platform for
anything, because it stands for nothing.
Since that interview with me two years
ago, Mr. Zuckerberg has talked to a lot of reporters, but has declined to do
another interview with me, although I have asked time and again. That’s a
shame, because I have a lot more questions for him. Such as:
Why tell everyone that you do not want
to be an arbiter of truth after you purposefully built a platform that
absolutely required an arbiter of truth to function properly?
Why did you never build firebreaks that
could have dampened the dangerous fires of disinformation that you have let
burn out of control?
Were you motivated by a need to expand
the business without limit or by a real belief that human beings would behave
if you let them do anything they wanted?
And most important, now that we agree
that Holocaust deniers mean to lie, can we also agree that we need to remake
the nation and also Facebook so that we can have a real dialogue built on
community? You always said that was your goal, right?
Or, after all this time and pain, is
that completely idiotic?
