As per our post regarding illegal content on Facebook (inspired by a friend of the JIDF) we decided to write a letter to Facebook staff to see if something can be done and why nothing has been done thus far:
Dear Facebook:
According to the third to last bullet point in the User Conduct section of Facebook's terms, users agree not to:
"upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offense, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law."Holocaust denial is illegal in 13 countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland). Germany, Austria and Romania have strict, explicit laws on this. Therefore, any group that denies the occurrence of the Holocaust is violating the laws of these nations, and thereby violating Facebook's Terms of Use (notice the language in Facebook's Terms of Use is "content that would... violate any local, state, national or international law"). Although these aren't the national laws of the US, they are a national law - the national law of Germany, Belgium, etc.
Therefore, should not the accounts of these users, groups, and all such content be deleted?
German law also outlaws anything associated with Nazism. So any group that has Nazi symbols and such should be taken down.
Finally, the Council of the European Union passed the Joint action/96/443/JHA in 1996, which makes "denying or grossly trivializing crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes" a crime in and of itself. So even those groups that trivialize the Holocaust or claim that 6 million Jews didn't die or whatever else would be in violation of this European Union law, and thus in violation of Facebook's Terms of Use.
Thousands of Facebook members have already reported many of the following groups thousands of times. Should they not be removed? Why hasn't Facebook taken action?:
Based on the facts....There was no Holocaust
http://www.facebook.com/gr
Holocaust: A series of Lies
http://www.facebook.com/gr
Holocaust is a Holohoax
http://www.facebook.com/gr
Holohoax
http://www.facebook.com/gr
Holocaust is a Myth
http://www.facebook.com/gr
There are also many groups on Facebook, which celebrate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his claiming that the Holocaust is a myth, like this one:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the man!
http://www.facebook.com/gr
...which, in the group description celebrates him saying:
"The real Holocaust is what is happening in Palestine where the Zionists avail themselves of the fairy tale of Holocaust as blackmail and justification for killing children and women and making innocent people homeless."and...
"They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets."Anything you can do to address the matter and remove the hateful and illegal material from your servers be appreciated.
Sincerely,
The Jewish Internet Defense Force
http://www.thejidf.org
Leading the Fight
