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In a lengthy interview published today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attempted to explain to Recode’s Kara Swisher why his platform wouldn’t ban Holocaust deniers:
[A]t the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong, but I think —
Swisher: In the case of the Holocaust deniers, they might be, but go ahead.
It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent. I just think, as abhorrent as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that I get things wrong when I speak publicly. I’m sure you do. I’m sure a lot of leaders and public figures we respect do too, and I just don’t think that it is the right thing to say, “We’re going to take someone off the platform if they get things wrong, even multiple times.” What we will do is we’ll say, “Okay, you have your page, and if you’re not trying to organize harm against someone, or attacking someone, then you can put up that content on your page, even if people might disagree with it or find it offensive.”
I won’t impugn Zuckerberg’s intent here, even if I don’t quite understand it, but it’s worth noting that Swisher’s question was really just a more contentious version of the question posed last week by CNN’s Oliver Darcy, in an on-the-record meeting between the megaplatform social network and a group of media reporters: Given Facebook’s stated commitment to ending its misinformation problem, why hasn’t it banned the extremely popular official page of Alex Jones’s notorious conspiracy clearinghouse Infowars? As Facebook put it in a tweet a day after the meeting: “We believe banning [pages like Infowars] would be contrary to the basic principles of free speech.”
This answer (like Zuckerberg’s riff on Holocaust denial) wasn’t particularly satisfying to people. In a hearing on Tuesday, congressional Democrats posed more or less the same question: “How many strikes does a conspiracy theorist who attacks grieving parents and student survivors of mass shootings get?” Representative Ted Deutch asked.
It’s hard not to be sympathetic to Deutch here, and not just because his district...