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Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)
- Hnsuz 6y agoWhy Facebook not closed?? Why not deplatformed? Why not public shami g? Why others get all this?
- papaf 6y agoI found the best modern link, with descriptions of UN activity, in an article in the Diplomat: https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/how-facebook-is-complicit-in-myanmars-attacks-on-minorities/ https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/how-facebook-is-complicit-in...
- rootsudo 6y agoNot just violence, genocide. Funny (not funny) how it's spun and minimized though. Also, paywall. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934 from the BBC: "The network said it had made progress in tackling its problems in Myanmar but that there was "more to do". Last year, the Myanmar military launched a violent crackdown in Rakhine state after Rohingya militants carried out deadly attacks on police posts. Thousands of people died and more than 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. There are also widespread allegations of human rights abuses, including arbitrary killing, rape and burning of land"
- diveanon 6y agoI volunteered at the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh while this was happening. Most of them were aware of this and attempted to stay ahead of the raids by monitoring some of the groups. Their stories are horrific and to this day I have bad dreams about what I saw / heard in those camps. One of my coworkers escaped through the jungle to Thailand where I now live. He lost his brother and father to a group with machetes. His story is incredibly depressing and makes me extremely grateful every day for what I have. We have spoken several times about the role of Facebook in what happened, and he has said repeatedly that nothing has changed and that it will happen again.
- tboyd47 6y agoDo you have any recommendations for charity groups working to lessen the plight of these people?
- diveanon 6y agoThere are several. A key thing to look for is whether or not the charity is focused on relocation. The conditions they were in while I was there were horrendous. The largest camp I visited was over 600k people. I was working with a few organizations, but from what I saw islamic relief was the most effective at getting people out. I believe most of the relocated refugees through that org wound up in aceh, indonesia. It's a humanitarian disaster that has been largely forgotten, I shudder to think what covid has done to their efforts.
- tboyd47 6y agoThanks.
- lostlogin 6y agoHave you or anyone you know made contact with Facebook about it? I’m not suggesting you should, I’m just wondering if anyone did and if there was ever any Facebook response that wasn’t per-canned lawyer crap.
- diveanon 6y agoI remember speaking to a few aid workers who were trying to get FB to donate to their efforts. To my knowledge they never received any money. If anyone can fact check that I would love to be corrected.
- sschueller 6y agoI guess you could argue Facebook should be shutdown as parlor was. Although parlor was only used for hate, Facebook didn't do anything to stop it either. I think a big issue is how facebooks algo (and others) are built for maximum profit which at the same time also radicalizes people in their filter bubble.
- 9front 6y agoMaybe "parlor was only used for hate" but Parler, no. There is questionable content on Parler as much as is on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
- thelean12 6y agoParlor was created in response to hate moderation on other platforms. It's not too far off to say "Parlor was created as a space for hate". Only used for hate is obviously wrong, but that doesn't change much.
- yters 6y agounfortunately, "hate speech" seems to be defined as "whatever makes me upset" where "me" is a group accepted by tge platform e.g. there are prolife groups that say nothing negative against any people, but get banned for explaining the facts behind abortion and who does it
- safog 6y agoHave you been on /r/The_Donald at all? Or are you just making whatever you'd like up?
- yters 6y agosure, they might be hate speech, but seems no worse than what i see on daily kos however, i am talking about an entirely separate group that goes out of its way to not say anything hateful and not condone violence due to tragic occurrences in the past, yet gets banned due to pointing out inconvenient and very uncomfortable truths if free speech cannot protect uncomfortable yet unhateful speech, it is worthless
- fairity 6y agoI'd love Facebook to do more to prevent misuse of its platform, but I don't see why I should blame Facebook for Myanmar violence. Facebook at its core is a tool that helps people spread information and opinions - not too different from the telephone or email. The blame for Myanmar violence should be placed squarely on the people that are spreading misinformation that incites violence. Even if Facebook does a better job policing content, don't you think these perpetrators will find an equally effective technology to spread their propaganda? If not now, then in the future surely they will? Don't get me wrong, I do think Facebook should police clear misinformation that can lead to human suffering, but it seems like the media want to convince me to hate Facebook. I hate the people behind this misinformation. And, I would love Facebook to get involved, but I don't hate them.
- jeromegv 6y agoThose arguments always forget 1 thing. Facebook recommend users to join groups, follow pages, and even shows content that is not from people you follow. So it isn't just a telephone company that allows you to make phone calls, it's a service that makes an editorial choice about what they show you. If they show you posts that incite violence in Myanmar and show you fake news that make you outraged about a certain ethnic group, it's possible that among a population of many millions, some people will decide to act on it. Remember, those people might never have been exposed to it, it's Facebook that recommended this content based on the engagement the posts were getting!
- Fellshard 6y agoI fall on the side of 'curation and modification of feeds represents creative work and therefore makes the platform responsible' for this very reason.
- ljm 6y agoYeah, I don't think Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. get a free pass on this just because they automated the process and took humans out of the equation. They can't claim to not be responsible for their algorithms.
- flowerlad 6y agoOn the internet everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. Sacha Baron Cohen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM Excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.
- anadem 6y agoThank you, I'd missed that and will share it
- gjs278 6y agolol you’re the one spreading misinformation now. 2/3 of millennials have heard of auschwitz. you just made that stat up or are citing a false report with questions that don’t explicitly ask that. you should be banned for fake news under your own system.
- fasdf1122 6y agoTime for all these SaaS companies to cut ties with Facebook.
- cm2012 6y agoFrom my understanding the Myanmar atrocities were mostly planned in private groups and chats by non notable figures, with private chain messages playing a big part. It's one thing to ban a politician inciting violence. Do you all want FB to monitor all your private messages for keywords, then block those messages?
- boomboomsubban 6y agoFrom what I've read, the atrocities were largely carried out by the military, who also had hundreds of people making fake Facebook accounts to spread their propaganda. Monitoring private messages likely wasn't even possible as Facebook staff had just four employees capable of understanding the language.
- billfruit 6y agoThere was this "Facebook" riot in Bangalore in 2020, which resulted in death of 3 people in police gunfire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Bangalore_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Bangalore_riots
- tinalumfoil 6y agoA lot of countries limit Facebook, and it makes sense that the attention on Facebook in the US is related to their US activities. India has responded to Facebook for their activities in India. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Facebook
- it 6y agoAnd now they shut down Trump even though he called for a peaceful protest on Jan 6.
- 99_00 6y agoI was surprised the article and headline didn't use the world genocide. But it looks like it is consistent with other NY Times articles from the time. This article was published (Nov. 6, 2018) after the UN official declared it a genocide. Yet, genocide doesn't appear in the article. UN official convinced of Myanmar Rohingya ‘genocide’ - March 12, 2018 https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/asia/myanmar-rohingya-un-violence-genocide-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/asia/myanmar-rohingya-un-viol... Another NY Times article from August 2018 also is reluctant to call it a genocide. >United Nations officials have raised the prospect that the violence could be considered genocide, and officials at the United States State Department have debated using the term, according to American diplomats. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/world/asia/rohingya-myanmar-ethnic-cleansing-anniversary.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/world/asia/rohingya-myanm...
- ndiscussion 6y agoIt's common for American media to minimize any genocide caused by the United States or it's corporations. Holocaust gets a pass because it has a convenient scapegoat.
- dmode 6y agoWhatsApp is even more dangerous in developing countries, and is used to spread dangerous rumors at rapid scale. This has resulted in public lynching just based on false rumors
- throwoutttt 6y agoDon't let this distract you from grandpa posting mean stuff on Parler
- johncena33 6y agoI am from Bangladesh. I know this for a fact that FB has been used (and still being used) to incite religious extremism and hatred against religious minorities in my country. Social media has been one of the biggest cause behind the rise of religious extremism in South Asia in general. For more reference please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Ramu_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Ramu_violence.
- chmod600 6y agoFacebook and Twitter were also used for the Arab Spring.
- trident5000 6y agoStill in the app store I see.
- CivBase 6y agoI believe Facebook has set a precedent it can never hope to keep up with - not so long as it keeps the algorithm on and designed to maximize engagement. It turns out terrible things are often very engaging.
- timothyduong 6y agoLast time this was brought up HN user @Zackees debating about semantics whether this was a genocide or not. Would love to hear his perspective on this now that FB admits this. I guess it's 'technically' not 'genocide' so its all a-ok according to @Zackees, it's all the MSM's fault. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=zackees https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=zackees
- kerng 6y agoWhy is Parler shut down and Facebook not?
- guerrilla 6y agoBecause USians care much more about what happens in the US than in Myanmar.
- maxerickson 6y agoNo service that Facebook depends on decided to stop doing business with Facebook the way AWS decided to stop doing business with Parler. Parler built thier infrastructure in one place, with critical dependency on that provider. So when the provider booted them, they ended up having to shut the service down.
- kerng 6y agoApple and Google still have the Facebook app in their respective stores. Why not hold everyone to the same standards? Or are there differences I'm not seeing at a high level? Maybe sophistication/existence of content moderation is better?
- maxerickson 6y agoI don't have the answer to those questions. My other comment is purely mechanistic, you'd have to ask Apple why they have not booted Facebook.
- bllguo 6y agois this rhetorical? Clearly because Westerners don't care about Myanmar but do care about the US; there's nothing more to it
- pixl97 6y agoBecause the Apple and Google execs live in the US where the violence is happening. It is very easy to be concerned about an issue when it is right out your back door.
- hikerclimber 6y agonice. i hope for anarchy all across the us and the world so we go back to the stone age.
- rogerdickey 6y agoBoring. Facebook has been used for every type of communication, whether it's inciting violence or sharing cat pictures with grandma, by almost every internet-connected human.
- deanCommie 6y agoI'd like to understand better someone who is commenting on this site, or this thread, and raising the question of "How can we possibly define/moderate/ban what is hate speech and what isn't?" The implication is because this is impossible, then we shouldn't even bother, because it's a slippery slope, and leads to all sorts of repressive behaviour. If you believe this position, I have some follow-up questions for my own curiosity: 1) Is it not true that we already have defined lines that we universally agree cannot be breached? Child pornography. Explicitly soliciting accomplices for murder. Explicitly organizing plans for murder. 2) If lines in the sand have already been defined, why not redefine them if there is new information available in our society? Please answer me without a "slippery slope" argument. That is abstract and hypothetical. Let's deal with concrete scenarios.
- WheelsAtLarge 6y agoMass communication seems to be the culprit. Yellow journalism had a huge impact in the US in the past, Rwanda's problems were inflamed via Radio and now social media is hurting the US and the world. Social media is the genie that's been let out of its cage. It's not going to go back in. I suspect the fix is to treat social media in the same way radio and TV are managed. They can't and should not be completely stopped but they can be managed by federal law. People will complain that it's against freedom of speech but free speech does not mean reckless speech. Words have consequences and social media lets every one have a virtual loud speaker that amplifies ideas that are said without much thought behind them. You can't even know whether the person is serious of just trying to be funny. It's a problem.
- cowpig 6y ago> Mass communication seems to be the culprit. I would change that to: Irresponsible use of mass communication. The tool is no more to blame than the duffel bag in a burglary. Mass communication is a powerful tool with many uses, both beneficial and harmful.
- person_of_color 6y agoThe real problem is people knowingly spreading fake news in order to bolster their cause.
- kazinator 6y ago"The Earth's atmosphere admits it has been used for millennia for calls to violence, such as battle cries, carried from mouth to ears by sound waves."
- ascendantlogic 6y agoWhat are the limits of free speech? Are we going to defend it even as the tools of it are used to orchestrate violent uprising based on false pretense and potentially destroy that very constitution that guarantees it? Are we going to abdicate it in the name of stability? There are no easy answers here. Whatever the outcome, social media no longer survives as impartial arbiters of content without moderation in the name of profits.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- f430 6y agoI think at this point anti-trust + regulation is inevitable for FANG. this is good for Microsoft who has most to gain from their loss.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoThis seems very likely. At this point tech companies hold more power than most governments. It seems only right that such a powerful entity should be managed via the democratic system. Facebook has the power to sway elections, especially in smaller countries.
- stevehawk 6y agofunny. it was used to incite violence in the United states too.