San Francisco — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg retracted comments that appeared to defend Holocaust deniers, after trying to explain how careful the social-media giant tries to be before kicking people off the social network. He used as an example a group that garners little sympathy. In an interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher, Zuckerberg was illustrating the difference between those who spread false information with an intent to harass people, and those who simply spread the misinformation. The first type gets banned, and the second doesn’t. So he tried to relate. "I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened," he told Swisher. "I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong." Facebook has long had a policy of letting people deny the Holocaust, except in countries w...

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