Holocaust Denial is Proliferating on Gaming and Social Media Platforms, Says New ADL Report
“Fortnite,” a game accessed by over 25 million users a day, being played on a mobile phone. Photo: Public Domain
The Anti-Defamation Leagues (ADL) Center for Technology and Society on Monday released a “Holocaust Denial Report Card” indicating that major social media and online gaming platforms such as Twitter, Activision Blizzard, and Epic Games, which developed the highly popular game “Fortnite,” have not been successful in eliminating content that denies the reality and severity of the Holocaust.
“Tech companies claim to be addressing hate on their platforms. But when it comes to Holocaust denial they aren’t,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said on Monday in a press release. “The consequence is that Holocaust deniers take advantage of this lax enforcement to spread their noxious antisemitic ideas and garner support for their hateful views.”
No company was given higher than a C, with YouTube and Twitch, a website where individuals stream themselves playing video games in real time, receiving a C+. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Discord each earned a C-. Twitter and Activision Blizzard earned a D- while Epic Games received the lowest grade, an F.
The ADL noted that online players of Epic Games’ Fortnite franchise, which is accessed by over 25 million people a day, create usernames based on different themes promoted by Holocaust deniers. Many usernames, for example, contained variations of “Holohoax” while others included “6 Gorillion,” which the ADL described as “a hateful phrase” implying that the Jewish community inflates the number of people who died during the Holocaust. A similar trend was identified among players of Call of Duty, developed by Activision Blizzard, and League of of Legends, a Riot Games production.
While nearly half of the companies surveyed by ADL forbid any content promoting Holocaust denial, it is seldom removed when reported by the “average user.” Other content the group identified includes “documentary-style videos” on YouTube claiming the Holocaust never happened, Facebook posts disputing the number of Jews who perished, and entire threads on Reddit, some reaching thousands of users, devoted to discussing Holocaust conspiracy theories.
The report recommended that the companies “ban Holocaust denial” and encourage seamless reporting of it.
“At a time when antisemitism is rising in the US and globally, tech platforms bear considerable responsibility for serving as megaphones for Holocaust deniers,” ADL Center for Technology and Society Yael Eisenstat said. ” Jewish users face real threats but the response from social platforms has been lackluster at best. We call on tech companies to stop being complacent when confronted with anti-Jewish hatred and to enforce their policies against Holocaust denial consistently and at scale.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), a Jewish human rights organization, issued a similar report in March, titled “Digital Terrorism and Hate Report Card,” explaining that TikTok, one of the fastest growing and most controversial social media platforms in the world, does not actively monitor or remove antisemitic content from its platform.
Memes on TikTok incorporating derogatory language towards Jews and making light of the Holocaust, as well as an illustration depicting the “Happy Merchant,” a drawing of a man caricatured as stereotypically Jewish and rubbing his palms together, were shared with The Algemeiner in April by Rick Eaton, Director of Research at SWC, during a virtual presentation of the group’s findings. Eaton explained that TikTok’s recent arrival to the social media scene is one reason why it does not yet have a robust content moderation team.
Content moderation on Twitter is also poor, Eaton said.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform, which has over 500 million users, has brought droves of neo-Nazis and extremists to the platform, according to a report published by Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) in February.
Data compiled by Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) with support from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) shows that antisemitic tweets mentioning George Soros and ‘globalists’ have doubled since he first offered to buy it in April. Additionally, “Groyper accounts,” i.e. those operated by neo-Nazis, grew by roughly 2,000 percent on the day Musk announced that he would join Twitter’s board and by 1,000 percent since his acquisition of it was completed.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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