Technically Incorrect

I wonder how management at Facebook might have reacted should they have come across some of President Obama's words Friday.

The president was speaking at the Buchenwald concentration camp, one of whose sub-camps, Ohrdruf, was liberated by his own great uncle. And he made sure to express his own feelings very clearly on a subject that Facebook believes should freely be discussed, Holocaust denial.

"To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened--a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful," he said. "This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history."

Facebook's defense for allowing Holocaust denial groups on its site centers around the notion that Holocaust denial is not, in itself, hateful. The company insists that, although it finds Holocaust denial "repulsive and ignorant," Holocaust denial groups do not contravene its terms of service.

The interior of Buchenwald, which President Obama visited.

(Credit: CC Joel Zimmer/Flickr)

Facebook's terms are very clearly written: "You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence."

So the president says Holocaust denial is, by its very definition, hateful, while Facebook insists it is not.

However, just the briefest visit to one Facebook group, Holohoax, produces wall posts such as this: "Jews are pretty good liars most of the time, but they tell so many lies they are bound to trip themselves up sometimes. Their exaggerations, half-truths, and outright inventions about the so-called "Holocaust," easily the most lied-about topic ever, are a good example."

Such groups are generally small. Holohoax has 40 members, whereas a newer counter-group, United Against Holocaust Denial on Facebook, has more than 40,000.

However, in light of the president's comments, might Facebook decide to apply its own terms of service against many groups, not just Holocaust denial groups, that seem to have only a hateful purpose?

Here's just one example: "I Hate Muslims in Oz."

Surely this group, by its very name, just might have fallen foul of Facebook's hateful content rule.

Should Facebook decide to make a stand for its own terms of service, it would not be an affront to free speech. It would be a statement about what kind of brand Facebook chooses to be.

eBay and Yahoo made a clear and simple stand against the sale of Nazi memorabilia on their sites. And this was in 2001. Both companies decided they simply didn't want to be associated with that kind of thing.

Of course, Facebook could also decide to change its terms of service and remove the stricture against hateful posts. That would also make things clear.

Facebook has confirmed my earlier suspicion that it has disabled two of the five Holocaust denial groups whose presence has caused much controversy over the past week, following attorney Brian Cuban's consistent pressure for the groups' removal.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail to Technically Incorrect: "Two of the groups have been disabled, but the other three remain."

He continued: "We are monitoring these groups and if the discussion among members degrades to the point of promoting hate or violence, despite whatever disclaimer the group description provides, we will take them down. This has happened in the past, especially when controversial groups are publicized."

This would suggest that Facebook is looking to the members of these groups to create the conditions for their own banishment.

It is a curious decision, as some would argue that the very existence of these groups fails to walk the line between hate and threat, if one can be defined at all.

In response to Facebook's comments, Brian Cuban said: "They have not addressed the issue. I find Barry Schnitt disturbingly dismissive and flippant about these issues."

How, indeed, should one interpret this posting, for example, from just before Mother's Day on a Facebook wall of one of the remaining Holocaust denial groups?: "Jews use the holocaust to achieve their agenda of killing innocents. Israel is the holocause (sic) of today."

Doesn't that feel like promoting hate?

One can only surmise that in the cross-disciplinary groups at Facebook that make decisions on policies such as these, lawyers have rather more influence than anyone else.

The Holocaust Memorial in Miami, Florida.

(Credit: CC Praziquantel/Flickr)

In a comment to a post from Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, Schnitt also said: "We are serious about our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and where there is content that violates these terms, we will remove it. We have spent considerable time internally discussing the issues of holocaust denial and have come to the conclusion that the mere statement of denying the holocaust is not a violation of our terms."

After the posting of Brian Cuban's open letter to Mark Zuckerberg on Cuban's blog, the Cuban Revolution, Schnitt also addressed for the first time that for many at Facebook this is also a personal issue:

"Many of us at Facebook have direct personal connection to the Holocaust, through parents who were forced to flee Europe or relatives who could not escape. We believe in Facebook's mission that giving people tools to make the world more open is a better way to combat ignorance or deception than censorship, though we recognize that others--including those at the company, disagree."

He added: "We may be fools for doing the former but not 'cowards.'"

Naturally, it would be interesting to know who at Facebook opposes the company's stance and whether Facebook would be happy for those employees, whoever they might be, to air their opinions publicly. Perhaps even on the walls of the three remaining groups.

However, it seems clear that this will not be the last we hear of this issue. In a further e-mail to Technically Incorrect, Schnitt explained who had been consulted by Facebook before the company determined its stance: "The experts we've talked to have generally been Internet law experts, free speech people, and experts on radicalism and technology. They haven't been specifically related to the Holocaust but that is a good idea."

It will be interesting to see what those Holocaust experts might say.

Following a concerted campaign by Dallas attorney, Brian Cuban, brother of entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Facebook appears to have begun to take down some of the Holocaust denial groups about which Brian Cuban complained.

Brian Cuban pointed to five specific groups.

As of 8:30 a.m. PDT Monday, "Holocaust: A Series of Lies", "Holohoax," and "Holocaust is a Myth" were still live.

The Holocaust Memorial in Stuttgart

(Credit: CC MobileStreetLife/Flickr)

However, "Based on the facts...there was no Holocaust" and "Holocaust is a Holohoax" appear to have been taken down.

TechCrunch on Monday also weighed in on the issue, with a headline echoing last week's Q&A with Facebook spokesperson, Barry Schnitt here at Technically Incorrect.

In the Q&A, Schnitt drew a distinction between Holocaust denial and another recent Facebook controversy, images of breastfeeding. Michael Arrington's headline puts it in stark terms: "Jew Haters are Welcome at Facebook as Long as they Aren't Lactating."

I am waiting for confirmation from Facebook and, perhaps, a statement as to whether the site has, indeed, reconsidered its position of last week, which was that it was better to have these groups out in the open, even if their ideas were "controversial," rather than removing them from Facebook.

Cuban has called for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to personally comment on the situation, but it remains to be seen if that will happen.

On Monday, I wrote about the very difficult issues surrounding the presence of Holocaust denial groups on Facebook.

Questions were raised by Brian Cuban, Mark Cuban's brother and attorney, as to whether the existence of such groups contravenes Facebook's terms of service.

I had a detailed e-mail Q&A Wednesday with Facebook's spokesman, Barry Schnitt.

I'm publishing it here in full, as Facebook is honest enough to admit that the company itself is still battling with some of these difficult questions.

I first asked him whether he felt Facebook had replied to Cuban's questions:

Schnitt: We do our best to answer user questions. We are still a start-up of 800 or so employees (far fewer answering user questions) serving 200 million users. As a result, we admit that sometimes our answers may not be as comprehensive as users like and we honestly don't have the resources to engage in detailed policy debates on a one-to-one basis. My point is that he said he never heard anything and that is absolutely not true.

Q: You mention that you have "recently begun to block content by IP in countries where that content is illegal." Why only recently?
Schnitt: Facebook is only five years old and blocking individual content in individual markets is not a trivial technical challenge. Facebook started in the US, so this capability wasn't necessary initially. As we have grown internationally, we've begun building the infrastructure to support compliance with international laws.

Do you think Facebook should be clearer about what content is or isn't acceptable? Do you think you should publicize in some manner which hate groups (and in which specific countries) have been shut down?
Schnitt: Our focus is on working to get the content down in the country where that content is illegal. I don't think it makes much sense to divert resources away from that effort at this point to tell someone in Canada that the page they are looking at is not available in Saudi Arabia, for example.

The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

(Credit: CC Inocuo/Flickr)

Your reply might suggest to some that there may be illegal groups out there that are still active.
Schnitt: We do our best to remove content that violates our policies or the law as quickly as we can. We have an extensive technical infrastructure for reporting and a dedicated team of professionals reviewing these reports. However, we can't guarantee that there isn't any content that violates our policies and I don't know of any site hosting user-generated that makes this guarantee.

You see, given the Newsweek publicity over your "Porn Cops" and the previous publicity over the breastfeeding issue, it might seem to some that Facebook's position is that hate is OK (as long as it's not been expressed by a known terrorist organization and doesn't expressly threaten violence or harm), while breast-feeding and other relatively innocent (to many) activities are not. It seems that someone complaining about breastfeeding will immediately ensure that the content is removed. While this is not so with hateful messaging.
Schnitt: To be clear, the breastfeeding issue has been widely misreported. Our policy is against nudity and we feel strongly that policy is important to keeping Facebook clean. The small number of photos we have removed are of naked women who happen to be breastfeeding. We take no action on the vast majority of breastfeeding photos that remain on the site. I encourage you to take a look at all the photos in this regard that are on the site, including the protest group: http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2517126532&ref=search.

The bottom line is that, of course, we abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive and ignorant. However, we believe people have a right to discuss these ideas and we want Facebook to be a place where ideas, even controversial ideas, can be discussed. Of course, we have some limits. I've discussed these previously and go into them again below.

One thing to consider that someone actually mentioned in the thread was the idea that there may be a benefit to having these ideas discussed in the open. Would we rather Holocaust denial was discussed behind closed doors or quietly propagated by anonymous sources? Or would we rather it was discussed in the open on Facebook where people's real names and their photo is associated with it for their friends, peers, and colleagues to see?

And how, precisely, do you draw the line between hate and threats? Do lawyers do that? Do the porn cops do that? It can't be easy.
Schnitt: You're right. The obvious cases are easy. Many cases aren't obvious, though and these cases can be very difficult. We have a cross-functional team from legal, user operations, policy, product, and communications that helps develop specific policies to anticipate or in response to difficult cases.

As I mention above, we have a policy against nudity but what constitutes nudity? We had meetings on that topic, consulted experts and looked at precedent from many sources including the FCC. In the end, we came up with silly-sounding but important rules like "the butt-crack rule," "the nipple rule," etc.

With hate and violence it can be even more difficult. We have some similar tests (e.g. Is the person in the photo just holding a gun or are they pointing it at someone or the camera?) but, in many cases, we have to rely on the user operations person reviewing the content to make a judgment call.

Thus, we have extensive programs to instill the proper skills, training, and expertise into these individuals to decide whether something crosses the line and also whether they might want to escalate to a lawyer or other person at Facebook to help them decide.

Having said all of that, we don't pretend to be omniscient and sometimes we make mistakes. However, we're committed to learning from them by developing new policies and reviewing the old ones.

One last question: I know there are some who would like to know whether you would permit the sale of Nazi memorabilia through a third-party Facebook app. I understand eBay decided to ban the sale of Nazi memorabilia even in the US, even though it is not illegal here.
Schnitt: It is a good question. Honestly, we haven't had to deal with it yet. I suspect we'll be having another one of those cross-functional meetings to discuss it soon.

Mark Cuban's brother and attorney for his companies, Brian, has written to Facebook demanding to know why the social-networking site allows Holocaust denial groups.

In a sustained and persuasive argument in his own blog, the Cuban Revolution, and his Twitter feed, Brian Cuban lays out his objections to five Facebook groups with names such as "Holocaust: A Series of Lies" and "Holohoax."

His opinion is that this is not a First Amendment issue.

"The belief that the First Amendment protects speech in the private social media arena or at your place of employment is a common misconception," he says.

Facebook is able, as a private entity, to choose its own rules with regards to free speech. However, he believes its terms of service very clearly limit the content that can be featured on any Facebook page.

You cannot "upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offense, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law."

This is Auschwitz. I have been there. It is undeniably real.

(Credit: CC Lumiere/Flickr)

Although Holocaust denial is not illegal in the US, it is a crime in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Israel, Slovakia, and Switzerland.

To Cuban, any Holocaust denial group is clearly committing an illegal act in those countries. He has therefore written to Facebook asking the company why it permits the five Holocaust denial groups he has found on the site.

He says Facebook has not replied.

According to a tweet he sent Monday, Cuban suspects that Facebook's belief is: "if the countries in which H(olocaust) D(enial) is illegal do not complain, why do anything."

However, last week Facebook saw fit to remove a KKK group from the Isle of Man with 95 members.

So one might think it would have the manpower, legal judgment, and basic humanity to at the very least address the existence of these five groups that appear to have a total of 357 members, some from countries in which Holocaust denial is a crime.

Silence seems a very peculiar response indeed.