TBD | Facebook Flips on Holocaust Denial
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2020
⏱️ 20 minutes
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Summary
Two years ago, Mark Zuckerberg held up Holocaust denial as an example of the type of speech that would be protected on Facebook. The company wouldn’t take down content simply because it was incorrect. This week, Facebook reversed that stance. Is this decision the first step toward a new way of policing speech on the social network?
Guest: Evelyn Douek, Lecturer at Harvard Law School and affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
Host
Lizzie O’Leary
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you're American, you probably think of free speech as the default, just the way things are. |
| 0:10.5 | And I don't know where it enters. The sister, I don't know if it's in the water or if it's in the kindergarten curriculum. |
| 0:16.0 | Evelyn Duick is not American. |
| 0:18.3 | But it's certainly something that I have encountered for years is just this like |
| 0:22.2 | First Amendment fundamentalism. She's an Australian who lives in Massachusetts, and she's one of the |
| 0:27.4 | most dynamic and nuanced thinkers about online speech. She lectures at Harvard Law School. |
| 0:33.5 | You came here to study kind of First Amendment law to look at this stuff. |
| 0:39.1 | As an outsider, what was your impression of the U.S. fundamental adherence to free speech? |
| 0:48.5 | I feel a little bit like gaslit as a foreigner when you come to America, as I did four years ago, |
| 0:57.8 | to study comparative constitutional law and free speech. |
| 1:01.4 | One of the most striking things about American free speech doctrine is this, like, |
| 1:06.6 | there's this example of there were Nazis that wanted to march in Skokie. |
| 1:12.7 | I know, jumping straight to Nazis is kind of leaping into the free speech deep end. |
| 1:17.8 | But Evelyn's describing one of the most famous First Amendment cases, |
| 1:21.9 | one that really tests American values. |
| 1:24.7 | And the story goes like this. |
| 1:32.6 | In 1978, a group of neo-Nazis wanted to march in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, largely because a lot of Holocaust survivors lived there. |
| 1:38.2 | 7,000 concentration camp survivors living in the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie. |
| 1:44.0 | Not surprisingly, there was a huge legal fight. |
| 1:47.1 | Skokie officials have blocked Nazi demonstrations with court injunctions. |
| 1:50.7 | When the Nazis appealed to the state Supreme Court, the judges refused to hear the case. |
| 1:55.0 | But what might surprise you, if you don't know the story, is that the American Civil Liberties Union, |
... |
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