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Posts Tagged ‘holocaust’

Earlier this week a Holocaust denier shot and killed a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. Facebook didn’t change its policy on allowing Holocaus denial groups, even though one group quickly put up a cartoon mocking the event.

If attacks on Jews by Holocaust deniers won’t be enough to sway Facebook that this is all hate speech, perhaps angry advertisers will do the trick. Brian Cuban has been tracking advertisers who have insisted their ads don’t show up anywhere near Holocaust denial pages on Facebook, and at least one who doesn’t want ads to be placed on profiles of people who are members of such groups.

Vodafone, Tesco, American Airlines and Domino’s Pizza have pulled advertising, says Cuban.

Domino’s Pizza’s Social Media Specialist Phil Lozen wrote to Cuban saying that “initially, Facebook was pushing back on their ability to block ads” from some of the pages. But as of today even pages showing search results for hate groups won’t have Dominoes ads. He also says that Dominoes would not have purchased ads at all if they knew of the possibility of their ads appearing near Holocaust denial pages.

What we really need are a set of large advertisers to boycott Facebook entirely until these groups are banned. There’s a reason why eBay and other private companies won’t let this kind of hate speech on their sites. It’s bad for business. And as soon as Facebook realizes that, they’ll change their policy. Then look for lots of talk from Facebook employees about how proud they are that their company did the right thing - [insert current policy here].

And for those of you who will argue that the best way to handle hate is to shine a light on it, debate these people openly, and generally assume that reason will prevail: you’re wrong. Read this USA Today opinion piece that is talking about the steady rise of hate groups in the U.S. - “the Internet gives formerly isolated racists, whether individuals or small groups, a means to stoke one another’s smoldering anger. With the ready availability of weapons, even a single person can do enormous harm.”

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In 1999 eBay was under heavy fire for allowing the sale of Nazi memorabilia. Their policy approach at the time mirrors almost exactly what Facebook is doing now with Holocaust denial groups, namely banning behavior in certain countries to comply with local laws, but allowing it everywhere else.

From a 1999 New York Times article: “eBay…said that the company already prohibited the sale of such items in Germany because they are outlawed there. But he said it generally polices the sales of banned items only after receiving complaints from users”

From a PCMag article in May 2009 on Facebook: “We have recently begun to block content by IP in countries where that content is illegal, including Nazi-related and Holocaust denial content in certain European countries,” the Facebook spokesman said. “The groups in question have been blocked in the appropriate countries.”

By 2001, though, eBay had changed its policies to ban all sales of Nazi memorabilia across its sites. The ban includes sales of Holocaust denial items. The current policy is here.

Part of the balancing act eBay uses when making a decision on a listing is to ban items which “lack substantial social, artistic, or political value.” It goes on to state “this includes items that may be deemed inappropriate or insensitive to victims of natural disasters or human tragedies.”

Facebook doesn’t want to be the last reasonable entity standing on the wrong side of the Holocaust denial issue. But it’s sure looking like that’s how this is going to play out.

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Facebook is apparently done talking about Holocaust denial for now. A couple of groups that got more out of hand than the rest were taken down, but the company’s policy of permitting the groups on the site remains. “Denying the holocaust is not a violation of our terms,” says Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt in a comment to our post yesterday. Meanwhile, Facebook’s ban on pictures showing nipples from breast feeding women remains. The pictures are pornography and a violation of Facebook’s terms of service. Interestingly, Schnitt is the spokesperson that handles both issues, and seems quite comfortable with the respective policies.

While we don’t have much officially being said, we do have some Facebook employees speaking their mind directly, and most are pro-Holocaust deniers. Product Manager Ezra Callahan describes the posts by Brian Cuban and myself as “incomprehensible reasoning.” Ezra is not a Facebook spokesperson, but Randi Zuckerberg, who is a Facebook Spokesperson, says of Ezra’s note “Really well-written, articulate, and insightful note by Facebook employee Ezra Callahan on being a Jewish employee and supporting Facebook’s policy to not remove groups that deny the Holocaust.” That sounds like a stamp of approval to me.

Ezra’s arguments in a nutshell:

- Facebook is a “company run by a prominent Jew” and can’t “possibly show preferential treatment to one offended group over others”
- The Holocaust is just one of many human tragedies: “There are quite a few other especially-horrifying events in humanity’s recent past that likely merit the same level of consideration”
- Providing a forum for Holocaust deniers lets people see how “stupid” they are

Here’s where I’m going to take a ninety degree turn. I’m not going to address these issues head on. Brian Cuban is doing that already, and provides logical counterpoints to these arguments.

But I actually think even engaging in this debate is dangerous. The Holocaust is in its own special category of fucked up human behavior. Not because of the millions of Jews that were killed in the actual Holocaust - sadly that’s just how we roll as a race. No, the problem is that Holocaust deniers make their arguments for one simple purpose - they want to finish what was started and wipe Jews off the planet. We all know this is the elephant in the room, it’s just that the lawyers who write terms of service don’t really know how to deal with that. Nipples are bad, even if clearly not posted for sexual reasons. Holocaust denial is ok, even if clearly posted in order to spread hatred of Jews. That’s not something lawyers can tackle.

I don’t make that statement lightly, nor do I expect everyone to agree. But in the last few days I’ve read a lot (a whole lot) of Holocaust denial literature on the Internet, and it is extremely scary stuff. The whole point of it is to suggest that Jews are engaged in a massive conspiracy to fool the world. These are the same types of conspiracy theories that led to the Holocaust in the first place.

When you engage with Holocaust deniers to talk about where the lines are drawn you’ve already lost. Ezra and the rest of Facebook is playing the game on their terms.

Holocaust denial is a seed. A seed that will grow into a fully bloomed second Holocaust if ever allowed to germinate. And Facebook is providing the fertile ground and watering needed to do just that.

That’s why a dozen or so countries, all of which otherwise support free speech, have enacted laws against Holocaust denial. People love to hate, even smart people with significantly more than a “shred of common sense” as Ezra puts it. So many smart people think there is a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. They can’t help but believe it. And giving those people a place on Facebook to share and expand those ideas is just too dangerous a thing to do. They know they can spread hatred of Jews if they stick mostly to just denying the Holocaust. And if a few members get out of hand every once in a while, they can just say that the group exists only to talk about whether the Holocaust happened or not, and certainly not to spread hate. See the images on my post from yesterday to see how these messages go.

Sure, we can’t shut down the dark places on the Internet where people are free to hate Jews and post pictures of breast feeding mothers. But Facebook can take a stand and say it won’t happen in their back yard. Holocaust denial is hate speech, and it cannot be given a place to take root.

This isn’t a slippery slope, Facebook. It’s evil. Pure evil. Don’t plant a flag on the wrong side of the line. Stand firm against racial and religious hatred, even if you don’t have to. You’ll look back in fifty years and be proud that you did. Because no matter what your terms of service say, this isn’t porn. It’s the Holocaust. And it happened.

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So now Microsoft is happily seeding buzz through Twitter account @officethemovie, which is tied to the marketing website for ‘Office 2010: The Movie’. The account was created recently and starting sending out tweets about 14 hours ago at the time of this writing. One of the first messages revealed a bit about the type of social networking integration the next version of Office is going to boast: “Office 2010 will include Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks integrated right into Word. That’s just a hint of what’s to come!”

Right after that one, there was another cryptic one about Zune, of which I’m not entirely sure what it has to do with Office exactly. It read: “June 2009 will be an important month for Zune lovers”, and was followed by another one that asked some people who expressed interest on Twitter that it concerns a ‘new product launch’ and that they should ‘hold off from buying an iPhone or Palm Pre’.

Neowin is considering this to be either a hint for a new (HD) version of Microsoft’s media player (which CrunchGear confirmed was coming this year) to be announced next month at E3 Expo, or the introduction of the much-rumored Zune Phone, a touch-screen multimedia cellphone Microsoft was reportedly working on together with Verizon.

Fact is no one knows for sure what’s coming, but Microsoft has in the past made it abundantly clear that it wasn’t planning on entering the mobile device manufacturing market with a proprietary device, and that it wasn’t building a Zune-specific phone. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually never going to happen, but I wouldn’t put any money on something like that being introduced next month.

More likely, devices equipped with the latest versions of Windows Mobile will be extended with software that tightly integrates with Zune services (a project code-named ‘Pink’) although Microsoft could also plan the announcement of a major distribution partnership with carrier Verizon, despite rumors that the latter is also in talks with Apple for an iPhone contract when the current deal with AT&T expires.

Or both. Or something else. Or maybe MS says June will be important for Zune just because it has a nice ring to it and they simply really don’t want you to buy a Pre or iPhone.

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When Medialets was founded in June of last year, CEO Eric Litman and his team decided to take a risk. They bet big that Apple’s iPhone platform would explode. It did — and it’s taken Medialets along with it. Today, the mobile analytics and advertising company announces its series A round of funding.

It was barely a month between the founding of the company and the launch of the App Store on July 11 of last year. But Medialets was there from day one. And thanks to that early start, the company’s offerings can now be found installed on nearly half of the iPhones and iPod touches out there in circulation. And their clients include many of the top downloaded apps. But the company clearly hopes the iPhone is just the beginning.

With its new $4 million round led by Foundry Group, and participated in by DFJ Gotham and early Google investor Bobby Yazdani, the company is thinking expansion. It already has been on the Android platform as well since last September. But while that platform has thus far failed to ignite a new market the way the iPhone has, indications seem to point to 2009 being a good year for the platform with many more Android devices coming. The team has already secured over 1,000 developer partnerships between the iPhone and Android platforms.

More importantly, Medialets is also looking to support BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm Pre in 2009. That would obviously put them on basically every major mobile platform.

Medialets has a really nice looking offering it terms of its advertising platform (screenshot below), and Medialytics, its analytics offering, has proved me with some solid mobile data over the past few months (all anonymous of course). One nice thing about Medialytics, is that it can work whether a user is online or offline — something which is often the case with the WiFi-only iPod touch.

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Way more countries have laws against holocaust denial (11 or so) than breast feeding (0), but guess which one is banned on Facebook? That’s right. Pictures of breast feeding babies are indecent, so they’re a no go. But Holocaust denial is totally cool because it fosters open discussion. Facebook wants to “be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones.”

Controversial indeed, based on the messages I found written on some of the many anti-holocaust sites on Facebook.

Brian Cuban is making the removal of these sites a personal mission. He’s arguing the law. He’s arguing terms of service. He’s arguing common sense and decency. These groups are clearly little more than excuses to spew hatred towards Jews, and Facebook is too timid to do anything about it. The first amendment doesn’t apply to private companies. So why is Facebook so willing to take a stand when it comes to hungry babies, but won’t do a damn thing when it comes to the Holocaust.

Because they’re cowards.

If Facebook doesn’t want to take a moral or ethical stand on the issue, they can easily make a case that the groups violate their terms of service. These groups violate multiple sections of the TOS, particularly Section 3. There’s an easy way out of this for Facebook, and it also happens to be the right thing to do. Why in the world must they draw a line in the sand and then stand on the same side as Holocaust deniers is beyond me.

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