(Slate) Reddit's r/AskHistorians mod on Holocaust denial: "We ban it immediately."

Wasn't sure where to put this, but might as well do it here. Mods, feel free to move to a more appropriate subforum if there is one.

Quote:

There can be no debate with Holocaust deniers. That is a core principle of moderating the AskHistorians subreddit, one of the largest history forums on the internet—and a crucial lesson Mark Zuckerberg seemingly does not understand. Zuckerberg got into hot water on Wednesday when he stated that Facebook wouldn’t necessarily remove Holocaust deniers from its platform because people “get things wrong” and because it’s not always possible to understand the deniers’ intent. This position fundamentally fails to grasp how Holocaust deniers spread anti-Semitic propaganda, underscoring a flaw in how the purportedly neutral platform thinks it ought to handle particularly odious ideas. Conversation is impossible if one side refuses to acknowledge the basic premise that facts are facts. This is why engaging deniers in such an effort means having already lost. And it is why AskHistorians, where I am one of the volunteer moderators, takes a strict stance on Holocaust denial: We ban it immediately. Deniers need a public forum to spread their lies and to sow doubt among readers not well-informed about history. By convincing people that they might have a point or two, they open the door for further radicalization in pursuit of their ultimate goal: to rehabilitate Nazism as an ideology in public discourse by distancing it from the key elements that make it so rightfully reviled—the genocide against Jews, Roma, Sinti, and others.

Quote:

We remove content that is racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic in nature and ban the offending users from commenting in our forum on a daily basis. While our rules are also designed to combat content like the denial of the genocides against American Indians, Armenians, and others, as well as talking points such as slavery revisionism, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust are two of the most popular subjects on our forum. Questions in these fields often attract scores of Holocaust deniers. This frequent interaction has again and again proven to us that Holocaust denial is a form of political agitation in the service of bigotry, racism, and anti-Semitism. It has also taught us a lot about the strategy of Holocaust deniers online and that the only effective way to stop them from spreading hate and lies is to refuse to give them a platform.

https://slate.com/technology/2018/07...hould-too.html

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