Sacha Baron Cohen denounces Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google as ’the greatest propaganda machine in history’ and culpable for a surge in ‘murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities’. The actor focuses on Facebook, saying that ‘if you pay them, the platform will run any “political” ad you want, even if it’s a lie’. Baron Cohen is speaking on Thursday at Never Is Now, the Anti-Defamation League’s summit on antisemitism and hate in New York, where he is presented with the organisation’s international leadership award.

Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities. What do all these dangerous trends have in common? I’m just a comedian and an actor. I’m not a scholar but one thing is pretty clear to me: all this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.

The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged - stories that appeal to our instincts and that trigger outrage and fear. It’s why Youtube recommended videos by the conspiracist Alex Jones billions of times. It’s why fake news
outperforms real news because studies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it’s no surprise that the greatest propaganda machine in history has spread the oldest conspiracy theory in history: the lie that Jews are somehow dangerous. As one headline put it: just think what Goebbels could have done with Facebook.

Zuckerberg tried to portray this “whole issue as choices around free expression”. That is ludicrous. This is not about limiting anyone’s free speech. This is about giving people including some of the most reprehensible people on earth the biggest platform in history to reach a third of the planet. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly there will always be racist, misogynist, anti-Semites and child abusers. But I think we can all agree that we should not be giving bigots and paedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims.

Zuckerberg speaks of welcoming a diversity of ideas. And last year he gave us an example: he said that he found post denying the Holocaust deeply offensive but he didn’t think Facebook should take them down because “I think there are things that different people get wrong”. We have unfortunately millions of pieces of evidence for the Holocaust. It is an historical fact. And denying it is not some random opinion. Those who deny the Holocaust aim to encourage another one.

If you pay them, Facebook will run any ‘political’ ad you want, even if it’s a lie. And they’ll even help you micro-target those lies to their users for maximum effect. Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem’. So here’s a good standard in practice. Facebook, start fact-checking political ads before you run them, stop micro-targeted lies immediately and when the ads are false, give back the money and don’t publish them.