Newtown Parents Demand Protection from Attacks on Facebook

NEWTOWN, CT -- Parents of a six-year-old boy who was slain in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School say that Facebook is failing to protect them from the "conspiracy groups and anti-government provocateurs" who are using the social media platform "as an instrument to disseminate hate."

Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son, Noah Pozner, was killed in the shooting, published an "open letter" to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in The Guardian on Wednesday. In it, they allege that their "families are in danger as a direct result of the hundreds of thousands of people who see and believe the lies and hate speech, which [Zuckerberg and Facebook] have decided should be protected," and that Facebook fails to provide them "with the most basic of protections to remove the most offensive and incendiary content."

The parents urge the Facebook CEO to "treat victims of mass shootings and other tragedies as a protected group, such that attacks on them are specifically against Facebook policy," and "provide affected people with access to Facebook staff who will remove hateful and harassing posts against victims immediately."

Facebook later countered in a statement, "...we don’t allow people to mock, harass or bully the victims of tragedies. This includes the types of claims in the letter that victims are crisis actors. We also don’t allow people to celebrate, justify or defend the tragedy in any way.”

The open letter in the British broadsheet was likely among the lesser concerns on Zuckerberg's plate Thursday, as Facebook's market value fell by $120 billion and its stock plummeted 19 percent in early trading.

Pozner and De La Rosa made headlines in April when they joined with the parents of another Sandy Hook victim to sue InfoWars radio host Alex Jones. The suit alleges that Jones' on-air insistence the shooting was a "false flag" operation and the parents "crisis actors" resulted in the families' defamation and their receiving death threats. They are seeking over $1 million in damages.