Here's what Facebook employees said about the Holocaust denial … in 2009 – TechCrunch

Mark Zuckerberg was in hot water this week thanks to comments he made during an interview with Kara Swisher on the types of content that should and should not be be removed from the platform.

Zuckerberg mentioned the Holocaust Deniers for example stated that he found them "deeply shocking" and then he added, "But in the end, I do not believe that our platform should shoot it because I think there are things that different people are mistaken. (In a follow-up email, Zuckerberg reiterated that he considered denial of the Holocaust as "deeply offensive" and said: "I had absolutely no intention of defending the intention of people who deny it. ")

the controversy that ensues, it seems worth mentioning some old articles from TechCrunch's founder, Michael Arrington – since the beginning in 2009, when Arrington highlighted the effort of Brian Cuban to remove Holocaust denial groups from the social network.

Drawn c comments from a number of Facebook employees ] including Adam Mosseri, currently vice president of product management in charge of Facebook News Feed, and Andrew Bosworth, who took over the material efforts of the company last year.

exhuming these old comments not like a "gotcha!" moment, but simply as a reminder that it's about "A long-time debate, in which the top characters of Facebook (some of whom were careful to point out that they were talking for themselves, not the company) articulated a fairly consistent stance. Here is Mosseri, for example:

I do not understand how one can rationalize censorship, no matter how bad or bad the message is. It's not the role of government, media or communication platforms to tell someone what they may or may not say.

And here is Bosworth:

Shouting a fire in a crowded building is not protected (legally or morally) impinges on the physical safety of others, to which they are entitled in our moral judgment. I think it's pretty clear that these groups do not represent such an imminent threat. They are unpleasant and ignorant to us all, but they should not be closed unless they pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others, such as by threats of violence.

And here is Ezra Callahan, who was then on the PR Team:

You do not fight ignorance by trying to camouflage that ignorance exists. You face it head-on. Facebook will not do good to the world trying to become its font of thought.

There is much more discussion in the original message.