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Does Banning Holocaust Denial on Social Media also Block Education?

Incidents where social media algorithms take down articles that explore legitimate controversies about the Holocaust suggest that the work of controlling denialism and hate speech needs more refinement. 

Josh Hawley’s Virtual Reality

Writer Gilad Edelman says that Josh Hawley's book twists the history of antitrust policy to fit the needs of today's Republican culture war against the social media giants. 

Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

Facebook isn't exactly like they hypothetical "Doomsday Machine" theorized by Cold War nuclear deterrence experts. But its vast scope and capacity to distribute misinformation faster than in can be detected and corrected mean that lessons from the philosophy of nuclear annihilation are apt for understandign the danger of the social media giants. 

Lara Trump Seems To Have Gotten Her Abraham Lincoln Quote From A Meme — And It’s Wrong

Lincoln may have once shared the sentiment, just not the actual words.

How Can Youtube and Reddit Successfully Fight Holocaust Denial, But Not Facebook?

A new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found 36 Facebook groups specifically dedicated to Holocaust denial.

The Last Days of the Tech Emperors?

by Margaret O'Mara

The mood of Congressional questioning of tech executives recalled the traffic safety debates of the mid-1960s that helped catalyze significantly more regulation for the auto industry.

Social Media's Holocaust Denials Are No 'Mistake' — They're Hate Speech

by Greg Schneider

It’s long past time for all social media companies to reflect on their role in enabling the hate speech proliferating on their platforms.

Zuckerberg’s Warped History Lesson and the Age of Incoherence

by Naom Cohen

The Facebook CEO invoked the civil-rights era to justify kowtowing to money and power. It doesn’t wash.

To Stop The Rise of Nationalism, We Must Remember High-Tech’s Role in Supporting Past and Present Nationalistic Agendas

by Clyde W. Ford

Since the dawn of the digital age, nationalism has relied on digital technology.

History-themed Facebook groups have become a magnet for racist content

Billed as a place to look at historic photographs, a clutch of history-themed Facebook groups are hosting offensive posts and conversations.

Yes, you should have free speech on Facebook.

by Andrew Joseph Pegoda

When blocking content or banning users, Facebook uses its ubiquitousness, power, wealth, and monopoly—made possible by neoliberal transferences of power from “real” governments to private businesses which function as unelected and unaccountable de facto governments—to silence.

WATCH LIVE ONLINE: From Silent Sam to Phnom Pehn: Monuments and Memorials in History and Myth

Information on a live online history lecture. Watch on March 13th!

What history could tell Mark Zuckerberg

Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg obsessed over the wrong bit of history.

The End of Privacy Began in the 1960s

by Margaret O’Mara

Choices that Congress made decades ago allowed tech giants to become as powerful as they are.

General Kicked Off Facebook Can Still Glorify Military at Grandiose Museum

For years, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, one of the most powerful people in Myanmar, presided over ruthless campaigns targeting minority groups along Myanmar’s borders.

Facebook Censors Art Historian for Posting Nude Art, Then Boots Him from Platform

Ruben Cordova used his social media profile as an archive of his research, but his photos of the Met Breuer’s Like Life exhibition triggered Facebook’s censors, who then permanently disabled his profile.

Rutgers reexamines decision on racially charged Facebook posts made by historian James Livingston

Did he really violate policies with his satirical post about white people?

Long Before Facebook, The KGB Spread Fake News About AIDS

Back in the 1980s, the rumor that AIDS was human-made was based partially on a report written in 1986 by Russian-born biophysicist Jakob Segal.

Facebook Puts Holocaust Denial Groups in Top Search Results

The social-media titan’s bad PR continues this week, days after Zuck said his website could not censor Holocaust denial.

Zuckerberg: Holocaust Deniers Aren’t "Intentionally Getting It Wrong"

“I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong,” he said.