Activists call on Facebook and Twitter to ban Armenian genocide denial – Business Insider – Business Insider
Posted By admin on January 1, 2021
Anti-hate advocates are calling on Facebook to ban posts denying the Armenian genocide, which led to the deaths of over 1.5 million ethnic Armenians, saying the social media giant's policy on hate speech fails to address crimes against humanity.
The call to action follows Facebook's October announcement that it would ban posts denying the Holocaust, which came after pressure from human rights groups, Holocaust survivors, and a 500-plus company ad boycott. However, the change did not include the denial of other genocides, such as the Rwandan and Armenian genocides, Bloomberg reported.
"They have an obligation to responsibly address all genocide," said Arda Haratunian, board member for the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), the largest non-profit dedicated to the international Armenian community. "How could you not apply the same rules across crimes against humanity?"
Now, voices from across the Armenian diaspora and anti-hate groups are calling for the company to change its policy. In November, the Armenian Bar Association penned a letter to Facebook and Twitter (which banned posts denying the Holocaust in the days after Facebook did), proposing that they expand their ban to posts denying the Armenian genocide, too.
"It made us hopeful, because it was a sign that Facebook is taking steps towards fixing its speech problem," said Lana Akopyan, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property and technology, and member of the Armenian Bar Association's social media task force. The Armenian Bar Association has yet to receive a response from either company, Akopyan told Business Insider.
The calls to expand hate speech policies come as social media platforms face a wider reckoning on how they regulate speech. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have criticized section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a legal provision that shields internet companies from lawsuits over content posted on their sites by users and gives companies the ability to regulate that content.
In recent years, Facebook has struggled with human rights issues on the platform. In 2018, a New York Times investigation found that Myanmar's military officials systematically spread propaganda on Facebook to incite the ethnic cleansing of the country's Muslim Rohingya minority population. Since 2017, Myanmar's military has been accused of carrying out a systemic campaign of killing, rape, and arson against Rohingyas, leading over 740,000 to flee for Bangladesh, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Facebook's current hate speech policy prohibits posts that directly attack a protected group, including someone of a racial minority, certain sexual orientation or gender, or religion. But the platform lacks a cohesive response to other "harmful false beliefs," like certain conspiracy theories, said Laura Edelson, a PhD candidate at NYU who researches online political communication. Rather than a systematic approach to harmful misinformation, Edelson likened Facebook's strategy to a game of "whack-a-mole."
"You are allowed to say, currently, the Armenian genocide is a hoax and never happened," said Edelson. "But you are not allowed to say you should die because you are an Armenian."
From 1915 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire killed 1.5 Armenians and expelled another half a million. However, Turkey still falsely claims that the genocide never happened.
"Holocaust denial is typically done by fringe groups, irrational entities. The denial of the Armenian genocide is being generated by governments... which makes it a far greater threat," said Dr. Rouben Adalian, Director of the Armenian National Institute in Washington, D.C.
It also makes enforcement a thorny issue for Facebook, since it may involve moderating the speech of political leaders.
"Facebook doesn't want to wrangle with this issue, not because it's technically difficult, because it isn't, but because it is difficult at a policy level," said Edelson. "There's a government agent here, that you are going to have to make unhappy. In the case of the Armenian genocide, it's the Turkish government."
Facebook did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment. Twitter said hateful conduct has no place on its platform and its "Hateful Conduct Policy prohibits a wide range of behavior, including making references to violent events or types of violence where protected categories were the primary victims, or attempts to deny or diminish such events." The company also has "a robust glorification of violence policy in place and take action against content that glorifies or praises historical acts of violence and genocide,"a spokesperson said.
Yet online the falsehoods proliferate, advocates told Business Insider. On Facebook, the page "Armenian Genocide Lie" has thousands of followers, and screenshots of tweets shared with Business Insider show strings of identical posts that appear to be posted by bots, calling the Armenian genocide "fake."
And stateside, Armenians point to a string of hate crimes, including the arson of an Armenian church in September and the vandalism of an Armenian school in July, as evidence that anti-Armenian sentiment is a growing issue.
The calls for change come amid international conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan and is populated by many ethnic Armenians. War broke out in September. In November, Armenia surrendered and Russia brokered a peace deal. Tensions continue to flare in the area and videos of alleged war crimes have surfaced online.
"Facebook has a responsibility, first and foremost, to its users, to protect them against harmful misinformation. The idea that the Armenian genocide did not happen pretty clearly falls into that category," said Edelson.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which successfully lobbied for social media companies to ban Holocaust denial, is also supporting the calls for change.
"ADL believes that tech companies must take a firm stance against content regarding genocide and the denial or diminishment of other atrocities motivated by hate," said an ADL spokesperson in a statement to Business Insider. "Tech companies should, without doubt, consider denial of the Armenian genocide to be violative hate speech."
Dr. Gregory Stanton, founding president of human rights nonprofit Genocide Watch, says that denial is a pernicious stage of genocide, since it seeks to erase the past and can predict future violence.
"Denial occurs in every single genocide," said Stanton. "I think it's irresponsible.... with Facebook's incredible reach, it absolutely should be taken down."
As for Akopyan, her fight to change Facebook's policy is personal. Her family survived the Baku Pogroms in Azerbaijan, a campaign in 1990 in which Azeris killed ethnic Armenians and drove them from the city. Akopyan's family left all their belongings behind and fled in the night, Akopyan said. The International Rescue Committee sponsored her family, and she relocated to Brooklyn, New York, at 10-years-old.
"I grew up in that tension as a child, where Azerbaijani mobs tried to kill me and my family, and I escaped," she said in an interview. "How many times [do] our people have to lose everything and be driven away from their homes to start over?"
"And it continues to happen," she added. "I can't help but think it's because there's constant denial of it ever happening to begin with."
Read the original here:
- Belief in Conspiracy Theories Is Probably Not Getting Worse Over Time - Office for Science and Society - July 31st, 2022
- Fiber artist confronts the Holocaust in 'Beauty and Terror' series - thejewishchronicle.net - July 19th, 2022
- How Holocaust Denial and Other Bogus Claims Are Poisoning Schools (Opinion) - EdWeek - July 18th, 2022
- 93 and feisty: A Dallas Holocaust survivor will never give up on her mission to educate - WFAA.com - July 18th, 2022
- Facebook reverses stance on Holocaust denial, will ban it now - July 14th, 2022
- Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General | UN Press - press.un.org - July 14th, 2022
- Criminalizing holocaust denial in Canada will protect democracy and free speech - The Conversation - July 10th, 2022
- Vivek Agnihotris Team Accuses The Wire of Soft Genocide Denial'; The Wire Responds - The Wire - July 10th, 2022
- Fighting Hate: A look inside the new St. Louis Holocaust Museum - KSDK.com - July 10th, 2022
- Denying Holocaust Denial | National Vanguard - June 23rd, 2022
- Israel Elected to Lead International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2025 - Algemeiner - June 23rd, 2022
- Denying Holocaust Denial, by Thomas Dalton - The Unz Review - June 10th, 2022
- MARCEAU: Holocaust denial should be outlawed in Canada - June 10th, 2022
- Evidence and documentation for the Holocaust - Wikipedia - June 4th, 2022
- Can You Hear Me? Speech and Power in the Global Digital Town Square - Council on Foreign Relations - June 2nd, 2022
- Shoes can be a method of escape, and a tool for taking action - The Fulcrum - May 12th, 2022
- How a Holocaust Survivor Finally Learned Her Own Birth Name | Time - TIME - May 6th, 2022
- What Changes Are Coming to the Transatlantic Digital Landscape? - German Marshall Fund - May 6th, 2022
- What to expect from a Musk-owned Twitter? - Al Jazeera English - May 6th, 2022
- What Do Twitter's Users Actually Want? - The Atlantic - May 6th, 2022
- Russia Is Not the First to Blame Jews for Their Own Holocaust - The Atlantic - May 6th, 2022
- It's a mistake to ban Holocaust denial - The Boston Globe - April 27th, 2022
- A Proclamation on Days Of Remembrance Of Victims Of The Holocaust, 2022 - The White House - April 27th, 2022
- Remarks by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at the Museum of Jewish Heritage's Annual Gathering of Remembrance - United States Mission to the United... - April 27th, 2022
- Comedy is a powerful recruitment tool: how the US rightwing use laughs for vast influence - The Guardian - April 27th, 2022
- Op-Ed: Will Twitter survive Elon Musk? - Los Angeles Times - April 27th, 2022
- 'Rolling Thunder' organizer pledges peaceful demonstration but won't speak to controversial guest - CTV News Ottawa - April 27th, 2022
- Survivor Olga Kay passes Holocaust education torch to youth to keep fighting denial - The Times of Israel - April 27th, 2022
- The Ups and Downs of Remote Work in New York - The New York Times - April 13th, 2022
- UN General Assembly approves resolution condemning ... - April 6th, 2022
- Northeastern Launches Into Busy Event Season - Northeastern University - April 6th, 2022
- Against Backdrop of Ukraine Crisis and Continuing Antisemitic Hate Crimes, Senator Anna Kaplan Brings Simon Wiesenthal Center's Renowned "Courage... - March 27th, 2022
- Ukraine, Racism, and the Wars We Ignore - Puck - March 18th, 2022
- Whoever is Labour leader has my sympathy: Ed Miliband on Starmer, the climate crisis and mislaying the Ed Stone - The Guardian - March 18th, 2022
- UN General Assembly adopts German-Israeli proposal against ... - March 8th, 2022
- Book bans have no place in the Flathead Daily Montanan - Daily Montanan - March 5th, 2022
- Commentary: Putin is a prisoner of his own delusions about Ukraine. They will be his undoing - Yakima Herald-Republic - March 5th, 2022
- The Twitches That Spread on Social Media - The Atlantic - March 2nd, 2022
- Impact of teaching the Holocaust and genocide studies in the classroom - WAOW - February 28th, 2022
- Florida House bill could erase years of progress on race and gender, advocates say | TheHill - The Hill - February 15th, 2022
- Whats Really at Stake in Americas History Wars? - The Wall Street Journal - February 11th, 2022
- Abbie Richards fights TikTok disinformation with a cup of tea, a conspiracy chart and a punchline - wgbh.org - February 11th, 2022
- Holocaust denial and distortion must stop - US Embassy in Georgia - January 30th, 2022
- To Combat Holocaust Denial And Online Hate, Congress Should Set Its Sights On San Francisco-Based Internet Archive - Middle East Media Research... - January 30th, 2022
- Holocaust Denial: Key Dates | Holocaust Encyclopedia - January 22nd, 2022
- UN adopts Israeli resolution to combat Holocaust denial - January 22nd, 2022
- UN approves resolution condemning denial of Nazi Holocaust ... - January 22nd, 2022
- U.N. Approves Israeli Measure to Condemn Holocaust Denial - The New York Times - January 22nd, 2022
- Hundreds of Biden Nominees Are Unconfirmed Amid G.O.P. Blockade - The New York Times - January 11th, 2022
- ADL: Holocaust denial still prevalent on Facebook, despite ... - December 14th, 2021
- Denial (2016 film) - Wikipedia - December 14th, 2021
- Holocaust Denial On Trial: The Real Story Of Irving V ... - December 14th, 2021
- Misha and the Wolves Director Sam Hobkinson on the Challenges of Making a Documentary About Fiction - Hollywood Reporter - December 14th, 2021
- Antisemitism, racism and white supremacist material in podcasts on Spotify, investigation finds - Sky News - December 9th, 2021
- It became crystal clear they were lying: the man who made Germans admit complicity in the Holocaust - The Guardian - December 9th, 2021
- The Way to Stop Bad Holocaust Analogies Is Through Education | Opinion - Newsweek - November 18th, 2021
- Im so obsessed with Kinder Eggs, I translated the packaging into hundreds of languages including Klingon - iNews - November 18th, 2021
- Readers Write: Breaking! Gulotta re-elected - Readers Write - The Island Now - November 12th, 2021
- Trust & Verify: Claims of critical race theory being taught in Collier schools remains unfounded - Wink News - November 12th, 2021
- Legality of Holocaust denial - Wikipedia - October 22nd, 2021
- Holocaust Denial: The Gas Chamber Debate | Imaging Genocide - October 22nd, 2021
- Texas schools are being told to teach opposing views of the Holocaust. Why? - The Guardian - October 22nd, 2021
- There are not two sides to every story... - The Daily Advance - October 22nd, 2021
- Italy's Right Is Whitewashing the Country's Past - Foreign Policy - October 22nd, 2021
- The Holocaust Didnt Happen - Antisemitism Uncovered - October 18th, 2021
- BREAKING: Because of Texas Republicans' Education Censorship Law, Holocaust Denial Is Getting Pushed In Texas Classrooms - Texas Democratic Party - October 18th, 2021
- Robert Faurisson - Wikipedia - October 2nd, 2021
- Lili Stern-Pohlmann, survivor of the Holocaust who was sheltered by a kind German woman and a Greek Catholic prelate obituary - Telegraph.co.uk - October 2nd, 2021
- Portman, Cardin Commend Biden Administration for Continuing U.S. Policy Against Participation in U.N. Conference That Promotes Anti-Israel Agendas -... - September 24th, 2021
- Spread Of Misinformation 'Pandemic Within A Pandemic,' German General Counsel Says - WVXU - September 17th, 2021
- Yom Kippur synagogue attack plot: Teenager and three others arrested in Germany - Euronews - September 17th, 2021
- Facebook knew Instagram made teenage girls feel worse about themselves but that they are addicted to app - The Independent - September 17th, 2021
- Far right website sees upsurge in hateful content and Covid-19 disinformation aimed at Scots - The Scotsman - August 22nd, 2021
- Speak, Silence: In Search of WG Sebald by Carole Angier review the artful master of repressed memories - The Guardian - August 22nd, 2021
- Misha and the Wolves: an incredible survival story that was too good to be true - The Guardian - August 13th, 2021
- Facebook's Frustrated Critics Take Their Fight to Washington - BNN - July 18th, 2021
- 'A Big Wake-Up Call': Filmmaker Evan Williams on Germany's Neo-Nazis and the Far Right - FRONTLINE - July 3rd, 2021
- US, Germany confront rising antisemitism, Holocaust denial - USA TODAY - June 29th, 2021
- Secretary Blinken's Travel to Germany, France, Italy, and the Vatican | US Embassy & Consulates in Italy - US Embassy Rome - June 19th, 2021
- Grading Facebook one year after the brand boycott - AdAge.com - June 19th, 2021
Comments