Facebook: Zuckerberg gets bogged down in a new controversy



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Every day his controversy. Facebook founder boss Mark Zuckerberg is under fire from critics for his refusal to ban social denials. In an interview on Wednesday 18 July at the site Specialized Recode, he said he does not intend to censor remarks that would have been held, according to him, "sincerely". "I'm Jewish and there are people who deny the existence of the Holocaust, which I find very shocking, but in the end I do not think our platform should remove that kind of comment because I think There are things that some people are wrong about. "

In the United States, revisionism and denialism are not prohibited by law, and jurisprudence tends to place them under the protection of the first amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. In many European states, on the other hand, revisionist or negationist statements are liable to criminal prosecution. "Holocaust denial is a long-standing, deliberate and persistent strategy of anti-Semitism that is unquestionably hateful, dangerous and a threat to Jews," said Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the world's leading organizations. anti-Semitism. "Facebook has the moral and ethical obligation not to allow its spread," he added.

Call for hatred

Faced with the wave of criticism, Mark Zuckerberg then sent an email to Recode to clarify his statements. "Of course, if a message crossed the red line advocating violence or hatred against a particular group, it would be removed," he wrote. For several months, Facebook has been accused of spreading articles, images or videos that, without containing a direct call to hate, can be seen as an encouragement to violent actions. In March, United Nations investigators said that Facebook played a role in the violence targeting the Rohingya Muslim minority. In Sri Lanka, the authorities even blocked access to the site in April, saying it encouraged inter-religious violence.

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On Wednesday, Facebook announced that it would remove false information posted on the network and likely to create violence imminently. "We are starting to implement this new policy in countries where we see examples where misinformation has (…) led to violence," said Tessa Lyons, head of Facebook, citing the case of Sri Lanka. For example, the social network may remove inaccurate or misleading content such as fake, created or shared photos to contribute to or exacerbate physical violence. But this initiative was relegated to the background by the statements of Mark Zuckerberg on the deniers.

"Stop Facebook": mission impossible?

Like other Internet giants, including Twitter or Google, Facebook is on demand for the critics who tax it, on the one hand, to arbitrarily regulate the contents of its platform and, on the other hand, to express violence and hate. With 1.4 billion daily users, the social network has to deal with an unprecedented volume, which pushed him to double his staff dedicated to safety and security, to 20,000 people including 7,500 responsible for only the contents posted on the platform. Mark Zuckerberg's clarification did not stop many Internet users from relaunching the #DeleteFacebook movement, launched after the outbreak of the Cambridge Analytica affair.

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"Whether it's punishing deniers or violating the rules of consent, Zuckerberg does not know how to handle the power he has," said Matt Stoller of the Open think tank on Twitter. Markets. "This confirms the worrying idea that this individual should not have authority over a larger population than the southern hemisphere," said Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at New York University (NYU). Scott Galloway, this new controversy should however have a limited impact on the number of users and advertising revenue of Facebook, which remains, for both as one, unavoidable. Only an elected official or a government can today "stop" Facebook, said Scott Galloway. "The only person in the world who seems ready to tackle the giants of tech is (the EU Commissioner for Competition) Margrethe Vestager".

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