4 ms·

Rohingya sue Facebook for £150bn over Myanmar genocide

65 points by Hokusai 5y ago

diveanon 5y ago
And they should get every penny. I was living in Bangladesh while this was happening and ended up volunteering at one of the refugee camps. The people there were very aware that the mobs were being organized on Facebook. Later while working in Bangkok I had a colleague from Myanmar who’s entire family was murdered as they tried to flee across the border to Thailand. People have been talking about this for years and Facebook absolutely needs to be held accountable along with the pieces of shit running that poor country.
- thefounder 5y ago
  What if they were using Signal?
  - diveanon 5y ago
    Signal doesn’t curate feeds and act as a radicalization engine in the name of “engagement”. Facebook is a blight on society, even in the United States and UK you can feel it’s impact.
    - p2p_astroturf 5y ago
      How does some random webshit showing stuff possibly relevant to a user constitute being a radicalization engine? Is this something they could have known at design time? I'm not being rude, I want to know the reasoning.
      - ChainOfFools 5y ago
        > website n-gate reader spotted :D
      - fault1 5y ago
        In this case, Meta was most definitely complicit for other reasons. - they started operating in a country but had no Myanmar-language human moderation, in a place where FB quickly became synonymous THE internet. - the AI-powered content moderation failed hard on identifying hate speech partially because everything was written in Zawgyi, not Unicode. It was way after the FB had a lot of eggs on their face that they issued public statements: https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/ https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/ They should have been much more proactive, but it seems like it was growth at all costs and ignore the rest.
        changoplatanero 5y ago
        facebook also doesn't have any content moderators in navajo or maya. should they block indigenous people from using their native languages on facebook to avoid harming them?
        skitout 5y ago
        Interesting question.... but it is a very different case than voluntary starting to operate in a country with voluntary no investment in an ok moderation in the main language spoken there
        p2p_astroturf 5y ago
        [dead]
      - newbie789 5y ago
        I’d probably watch the details of the lawsuit or read details from news outlets rather than demanding that strangers on this website explain stuff that you can Google easily. While we are just demanding random details from strangers, what are your religious beliefs? I only ask because since you’re a poster here, I’m entitled to ask you whatever I want about any arbitrary topic and get an answer.
  - dr-detroit 5y ago
    Then it wouldn't be anything like facebook since it only copied 1 of the CIA sponsored sexapp's many powerful features. (ABCnews.com)
N1H1L 5y ago
The problem is that anger is addictive. Even if humans didn't understand this fact about human nature, the engagement maximizing algorithms absolutely homed in on it. It's also pretty obvious today that the average tech-bro sneering at the humanities a decade back didn't understand this phenomenon or thought it was unimportant. This short-sightedness from Big Tech is why there is such a societal backlash towards tech today, which is sad because much good has also come out of tech.
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
Good!
stevenalowe 5y ago
Instead of IDK suing the Myanmar government? This makes no sense
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  Sovereign immunity means they cannot sue the Myanmar government.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    I mean, I think the bigger issue is probably how rule of law is totally shattered in Myanmar, and you're not going to get some other government to give you relief when the proper venue is in the jurisdiction where the crimes occurred.
- zephyr9 5y ago
  Just to be clear, you're throwing your hat in on the side of those who aided the genocide here? Okay.
  - stevenalowe 5y ago
    Just to be clear, no. Suing a platform makes no sense.
spitfire 5y ago
I wonder if there'll be another book written. Along the lines of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
dang 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29462176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29462176

65 points by Hokusai 5y ago

And they should get every penny. I was living in Bangladesh while this was happening and ended up volunteering at one of the refugee camps. The people there were very aware that the mobs were being organized on Facebook. Later while working in Bangkok I had a colleague from Myanmar who’s entire family was murdered as they tried to flee across the border to Thailand. People have been talking about this for years and Facebook absolutely needs to be held accountable along with the pieces of shit running that poor country.

thefounder 5y ago
What if they were using Signal?
- diveanon 5y ago
  Signal doesn’t curate feeds and act as a radicalization engine in the name of “engagement”. Facebook is a blight on society, even in the United States and UK you can feel it’s impact.
  - p2p_astroturf 5y ago
    How does some random webshit showing stuff possibly relevant to a user constitute being a radicalization engine? Is this something they could have known at design time? I'm not being rude, I want to know the reasoning.
    - ChainOfFools 5y ago
      > website n-gate reader spotted :D
    - fault1 5y ago
      In this case, Meta was most definitely complicit for other reasons. - they started operating in a country but had no Myanmar-language human moderation, in a place where FB quickly became synonymous THE internet. - the AI-powered content moderation failed hard on identifying hate speech partially because everything was written in Zawgyi, not Unicode. It was way after the FB had a lot of eggs on their face that they issued public statements: https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/ https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/ They should have been much more proactive, but it seems like it was growth at all costs and ignore the rest.
      - changoplatanero 5y ago
        facebook also doesn't have any content moderators in navajo or maya. should they block indigenous people from using their native languages on facebook to avoid harming them?
        skitout 5y ago
        Interesting question.... but it is a very different case than voluntary starting to operate in a country with voluntary no investment in an ok moderation in the main language spoken there
      - p2p_astroturf 5y ago
        [dead]
    - newbie789 5y ago
      I’d probably watch the details of the lawsuit or read details from news outlets rather than demanding that strangers on this website explain stuff that you can Google easily. While we are just demanding random details from strangers, what are your religious beliefs? I only ask because since you’re a poster here, I’m entitled to ask you whatever I want about any arbitrary topic and get an answer.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  Then it wouldn't be anything like facebook since it only copied 1 of the CIA sponsored sexapp's many powerful features. (ABCnews.com)

N1H1L 5y ago

The problem is that anger is addictive. Even if humans didn't understand this fact about human nature, the engagement maximizing algorithms absolutely homed in on it. It's also pretty obvious today that the average tech-bro sneering at the humanities a decade back didn't understand this phenomenon or thought it was unimportant. This short-sightedness from Big Tech is why there is such a societal backlash towards tech today, which is sad because much good has also come out of tech.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

Good!

stevenalowe 5y ago

Instead of IDK suing the Myanmar government? This makes no sense

smnrchrds 5y ago
Sovereign immunity means they cannot sue the Myanmar government.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  I mean, I think the bigger issue is probably how rule of law is totally shattered in Myanmar, and you're not going to get some other government to give you relief when the proper venue is in the jurisdiction where the crimes occurred.
zephyr9 5y ago
Just to be clear, you're throwing your hat in on the side of those who aided the genocide here? Okay.
- stevenalowe 5y ago
  Just to be clear, no. Suing a platform makes no sense.

spitfire 5y ago

I wonder if there'll be another book written. Along the lines of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

dang 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29462176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29462176