To Combat Holocaust Denial And Online Hate, Congress Should Set Its Sights On San Francisco-Based ...

[At the time of this writing] Exactly one year ago, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released a report detailing how the Internet Archive enables neo-Nazis and white supremacists to spread their messages of hate, incitement to violence and Holocaust denial by allowing users to post and then easily share such content. We hoped that exposing this rampant online hate, especially on a day of Holocaust remembrance, would lead to action. But, one year on, absolutely nothing has changed. The Internet Archive remains a powerful vehicle for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and the outlandish idea that the Holocaust never happened.

It is time to compel the Internet Archive to change. We call on Congress, particularly those Congressional leaders from the Bay Area, to take action to hold the Internet Archive accountable for its role in spreading antisemitic and racist hate, as well as Holocaust denial – as Congress has done with other major tech companies. This move would be especially welcome following the adoption of a historic UN resolution condemning Holocaust denial and distortion and calling on countries to take action to combat it.  

Despite its lofty sounding mission, the Internet Archive, which receives both private and public funding, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation, does not function like an academic database, providing historical context for its content. Rather, it makes freely available everything from Nazi-era propaganda to the manifestos of mass killers who have inspired copycat attacks, text and videos from prominent neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, and handbooks for carrying out attacks against Jews and others (see a compilation of examples here). An email address is the only information required to post this content, which can be easily shared and is fodder for recruiting extremists to the cause of white supremacy.

The Internet Archive does have ways to alert its users about debunked content when it wants to – it announced in 2020 that it would annotate "false and misleading information" in its "Wayback Machine" and indicate whether an item had passed muster with a fact-checking organization. The findings of MEMRI's 2021 report were shared with the director of the Wayback Machine, Mark Graham, at his request. However, despite receiving clear evidence of the virulent and violent content being posted and shared, Graham responded simply by saying that there were "difficult ethical and other decisions to consider around running an online library". In other words, the Internet Archive would not take any steps on its own initiative to either annotate, flag or remove the flood of hateful content that it currently hosts.

This refusal to proactively address the problem of rampant misinformation and incitement on its platform leaves no choice but for elected officials to involve themselves – and as quickly as possible. Graham is correct when he states that these are complicated issues and there are considerations of free speech to balance when discussing online content. But Congress and NGOs have rightly demanded that tech giants like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter implement measures to prevent the spread of hate, misinformation and incitement to violence on their platforms. Certainly, the Internet Archive should not have free rein to spread such content without any context or disclaimer, while other tech companies have been forced to confront these issues and work to address them.

https://www.memri.org/reports/combat-holocaust-denial-and-online-hate-congress-should-set-its-sights-san-francisco-based