‘Except perhaps for Mark’: Internal emails show Facebook mulling fake news plea from Sacha Baron Cohen

It was eight days after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and Facebook was facing criticism that a flood of false stories on its platform had helped elect Donald Trump. That morning, Sheryl Sandberg got a policy memo from an unlikely source: Sacha Baron Cohen. In an email titled “Thoughts for the day,” the comedian behind “Ali G” and “Borat” urged Sandberg and her colleagues to follow the example of Google, with its fact-check labels and its counter-radicalization messages for people searching for ISIS-related terms. And if Facebook chose to crack down on falsehoods, it should “include Holocaust Denial as fake news,” he wrote, according to newly revealed documents as part of New Mexico’s Cambridge Analytica lawsuit. “Fascist movements need to deny the holocaust in order to get new supporters.” He also proposed a “MICHELIN GUIDE FOR THE WEB,” in which experts chosen through Encyclopedia Britannica, top universities or a consulting firm named Oxford Analytica would recommend trustworthy websites. (Oxford Analytica bore no relation to Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct political consultancy that, 16 months later, would spark global outrage and ultimately cost Facebook billions o…