Facebook apologises to the Anne Frank Center for removing image of naked child holocaust victims

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

• Facebook has apologised to the Anne Frank Center for removing an article it posted which featured an image of naked child holocaust victims.
• Facebook said the post was removed because it featured nude images of children, which is banned on the platform. It later restored the post.
• It's not the first time Facebook's moderation process has failed to take historical context into account.

Facebook has apologised to the Anne Frank Center for removing an article it posted calling for more Holocaust education. The post featured an image of child Holocaust victims, naked and emaciated.

The Anne Frank Center asked Facebook on Wednesday to clarify why it had removed the post. It also highlighted that Facebook allows Holocaust denial on its platform, which it viewed as hypocrisy.

Six hours later Facebook apologised, saying that the post had been removed because it featured nude images of children, which are banned on the platform. It also restored the post.

It is not clear whether the image was automatically flagged by Facebook's algorithm or reported by a user. Facebook did not elaborate when asked by Business Insider.

This is not the first time Facebook has had trouble with historical context. In July it apologized for flagging the Declaration of Independence as hate speech, and museums in Belgium published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg after they found nude paintings by Rubens were being censored on the platform.