‘I Don’t Think That They’re Intentionally Getting It Wrong’ Facebook CEO Says of Holocaust Deniers
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, recently under fire for his company’s part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal that helped place Trump in the White House and for allowing “fake news” to take root on the platform, is about to be under fire for remarks he gave in a just published interview.
Zuckerberg told ReCode’s co-founder Kara Swisher that he allows Holocaust denial pages to stay on Facebook because it’s not clear their intent is to “get things wrong.”
Here is that portion of the interview. Zuckerberg’s remarks are not bolded, Swisher’s are in bold type:
I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened.
Yes, there’s a lot.
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-
In the case of the Holocaust deniers, they might be, but go ahead.
It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent. I just think, as abhorrent as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that I get things wrong when I speak publicly. I’m sure you do. I’m sure a lot of leaders and public figures we respect do too, and I just don’t think that it is the right thing to say, “We’re going to take someone off the platform if they get things wrong, even multiple times.” What we will do is we’ll say, “Okay, you have your page, and if you’re not trying to organize harm against someone, or attacking someone, then you can put up that content on your page, even if people might disagree with it or find it offensive.” But that doesn’t mean that we have a responsibility to make it widely distributed in News Feed. I think we, actually, to the contrary-
The entire interview is important and you can read it on ReCode.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, some are making the case that something is either false or not, and if it’s false and damaging or dangerous, some suggest it should be banned:
Image by Anthony Quintano via Flickr and a CC license