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We were recently hired by the Conference on Material Claims Against Germany to help them with a big task:
convince Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook must ban Holocaust denial posts.
The Claims Conference, which has been working for nearly 70 years to support Holocaust survivors, found that Facebook was contributing to the dramatic, global rise in anti-Semitism by allowing Holocaust denial to proliferate on its platforms.
Our efforts involved a one-two punch: (1) Gain strong support among elected officials across the nation for the Claims Conference's social media campaign, #NoDenyingIt, in which survivors recorded brief videos of their stories and implored Mark Zuckerberg to put an end to Holocaust denial posts; (2) Generate enough press coverage for the Claims Conference's report on the lack of Holocaust knowledge among Millennials and Generation Z in the United States to pressure Zuckerberg to act. The Claims Conference's national and state-by-state surveys, which were the basis for the report, found huge gaps in Holocaust knowledge and a belief among 11 percent of national respondents that Jews caused the Holocaust.
As a result of our outreach and efforts, dozens of members of Congress, as well as state and local officials throughout the country, joined the social media campaign, sharing the survivors' videos on their official social media channels and calling for change. We also helped the Claims Conference generate more than 300 press stories in media outlets across the country.
The Results: On our first day of news coverage of the report, it became the top trending topic on Twitter. Within weeks, the report had been covered by media outlets in nearly every state and major city. Shortly thereafter Facebook announced a change in policy: Moving forward, it would prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust. Zuckerberg cited the survey as a main driver of the policy change.
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