UNESCO Report: “Half of Holocaust-Related Content on Telegram Denies or Distorts the Facts”

As part of their plan to counter the denial and distortion of the Holocaust, UNESCO and the United Nations sought to objectively measure the extent of these phenomena on social networks, in partnership with the World Jewish Congress. They commissioned researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute to identify and analyze 4,000 posts related to the Holocaust, on five major platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok and Twitter.

The report demonstrates that Holocaust denial and distortion is massive on Telegram, a platform known for its lack of moderation and clear user guidelines . Nearly half (49%) of Holocaust-related public content on this platform denies or distorts the facts. This rate rises to over 80% for messages in German, and around 50% in English and French. These posts, easily accessible to people looking for Holocaust-related information on the platform, are often explicitly antisemitic.

On moderated platforms, denial and distortion are also present, but to a lesser extent. They concern 19% of Holocaust-related content on Twitter, 17% on TikTok, 8% on Facebook and 3% on Instagram. But the falsification of the facts about the Holocaust then takes on new forms: perpetrators learn to evade content moderation, by using humorous and parodic memes as a strategy intended to normalize antisemitic ideas, for example, making these ideas appear mainstream.

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