Twitter announced earlier this month that it would ban posts that “deny or diminish” violent events, including the Holocaust. But in a Senate hearing Wednesday, CEO Jack Dorsey appeared to say that Twitter did not have a policy of removing content denying the Holocaust.
Responding to a question from Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Co., Dorsey said that Holocaust denial is not included among the types of misinformation Twitter bans.
“We have a policy against misinformation in three categories, which are manipulated media, public health, specifically COVID, and civic integrity, election interference and voter suppression,” Dorsey said in a video shared by Yahoo News reporter Alexander Nazaryan. “We do not have a policy or enforcement for any other types of misleading information that you’re mentioning.”
Gardner specifically asked Dorsey: “If somebody denied the Holocaust happened, it’s not misinformation?”
“It’s misleading information,” Dorsey responded. “But we don’t have a policy against that type of misleading information.”
Dorsey’s comments appear to contradict a company spokesperson’s statement to Bloomberg News on October 14th that while the company doesn’t have an explicit policy barring Holocaust denial, it would remove “attempts to deny or diminish” violent events, including the Holocaust.
“We strongly condemn antisemitism, and hateful conduct has absolutely no place on our service,” a Twitter spokesperson told “We also have a robust ‘glorification of violence’ policy in place and take action against content that glorifies or praises historical acts of violence and genocide, including the Holocaust.”
Dorsey has yet to publicly clarify his comments, but a Twitter spokesperson responded to a query from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that appeared to reiterate the company’s earlier statement to Bloomberg.
“Our Hateful Conduct policy prohibits attempts to deny or diminish violent events, and our glorification of violence policy prohibit glorification of genocide including the Holocaust,” the spokesperson said.
The Senate hearing is also discussing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a legal provision that absolves social media companies of responsibility for most illegal content published on their platforms. Officials on both sides of the aisle have called for Section 230 to be reexamined.
Twitter’s approach to Khamenei’s tweets, particularly those that call for the elimination of Israel, was also questioned earlier this year in a hearing in the Israeli Knesset. A Twitter official said those tweets did not violate company guidelines.
“We have an approach toward leaders that says that direct interactions with fellow public figures, comments on political issues of the day, or foreign policy saber-rattling on military-economic issues are generally not in violation of our rules,” said Ylwa Pettersson, Twitter’s policy head for Israel and Nordic countries.