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Twitter will ban Holocaust denial posts, following Facebook

Twitter will ban Holocaust denial posts, following Facebook

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Facebook implemented the policy on Monday

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter will ban posts that deny the Holocaust, a company spokesperson confirmed today. The news, first reported by Bloomberg, comes two days after Facebook implemented the same policy.

“We strongly condemn antisemitism, and hateful conduct has absolutely no place on our service,” the Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. They said that “attempts to deny or diminish” violent events are prohibited under Twitter’s hateful conduct policy. Glorification of violent events, including the Holocaust, is banned, too.

Facebook cited a “well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally”

The ban is not listed on Twitter’s website describing its hateful conduct policy. Instead, the ban is said to reflect Twitter’s internal interpretation of how the policy is meant to be applied. That interpretation is not new, the spokesperson said, though they didn’t state how long the policy has been in place.

The announcement comes after Facebook said on Monday that it would ban denial or distortion of the Holocaust. The company cited a “well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people.”

In July, the Anti-Defamation League said that Holocaust denial has “become more widespread” and specifically called out Facebook as having a “Holocaust denial problem.” It listed Facebook groups containing hundreds of members that promoted Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic beliefs.

While Twitter hasn’t been criticized as specifically, the platform for years had serious issues with white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The company was repeatedly criticized for failing to remove them, though it has slowly increased moderation in recent years and banned some of the most prominent and egregious examples.

Twitter indicated that its policy prohibits denial of other genocides, too. Facebook said its policy specifically covers the Holocaust.