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The whole situation is awful. I do wonder what the internal discussions in Facebook at the time were like. How did all the human-rights groups find themselves t

The whole situation is awful. I do wonder what the internal discussions in Facebook at the time were like. How did all the human-rights groups find themselves talking with the department of fobbing people off instead of the one that would do something. Maybe the department of fobbing people off were trying to do something but had insufficient political power within Facebook. Though I guess those discussions/emails would be very unlikely to come out except in a court case and I’m not sure what case that would be. If you look at the things Facebook work on, it does seem that they do care a lot about not wanting various kinds of bad behaviour on their platform. I don’t know if the scope was materially narrower in the past or if this was a problem of being too disconnected from the users in Myanmar (ie language barriers or applying policies designed for the US). I have a hard time thinking about the counterfactuals. Could this have happened with Twitter for example? It feels to me like the biggest advantage facebook had was being subsidised and if it didn’t have the advantage (and maybe if prices had gone down a bit over a few years) the same thing could have happened over Twitter. It’s not clear to me how much the government wanted the genocide to happen. Presumably the big advantage to them to it happening over Facebook is some kind of deniability and if they didn’t care about that and were sufficiently competent they could have put the hate preachers on the radio instead of letting them find their audience on the internet.

alephnerd 3y ago
> Could this have happened with Twitter for example? It did - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/09/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-accused-of-ignoring-plight-of-rohingya-in-tweets-promoting-myanmar https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/09/twitter-c... FB was much more destructive simply because it was part of FB's Internet.org initiative [1] which drove FB adoption. > It’s not clear to me how much the government wanted the genocide to happen. The Arakan National Party, the primary party in Rakhine/Arakan, is anti-Rohingya and its leadership participated in the 2012 riots along with the 969 movement. They entered a coalition with the National League for Democracy (Aung Sang Syu Ki's party) and even got an Ethnic Affairs Minister [2] - that they held on to during the Genocide. That said, the issues in Rakhine were further exacerbated by the India-China rivalry, as both countries turned a blind eye to the Tatmadaw and would arm ethnic militias within Rakhine and across Myanmar in general, as Myanmar is a buffer between the two countries, ethnic issues in Myanmar blowback across Southwest China (eg. Kokang Chinese * ) and Northeast India (eg. Manipur Ethnic Violence **), and both India and China have competing defense and infrastructure projects within Myanmar [3] A lot of this could have been avoided if Jinnah annexed the Rohingya majority regions of Rakhine into Pakistan like Rohingya asked in 1946 [4]. It's sadly another forgotten chapter of Partition and decolonization of the British Raj * If you live in San Francisco, most ethnic Chinese in Chinatown are now Kokang. They own most of those trendy Burmese restaurants like Burma Love and Manadaly ** The Myanmar subgroup of the Kukis (Chin/Zo) have a significant presence in SF and Daly City as well. [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org [2] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arakan_National_Party https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arakan_National_Party [3] - https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/how-china-india-bangladesh-could-be-drawn-myanmar-s-conflict https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/how-china-indi... [4] - https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/rohingyas-and-the-unfinished-business-of-partition/ https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/rohingyas-and-the-unfinished...
tjpnz 3y ago
>The whole situation is awful. I do wonder what the internal discussions in Facebook at the time were like. What's the bare minimum we can do while making it look like we're doing something?
hifromwork 3y ago
>I do wonder what the internal discussions in Facebook at the time were like. We're going to learn that in part III, btw ("Next up: Part III: The Inside View").
anon84873628 3y ago
>Though I guess those discussions/emails would be very unlikely to come out except in a court case and I’m not sure what case that would be. There is a class action lawsuit against Meta by Rohingya people: https://www.rohingyafacebookclaim.com/ https://www.rohingyafacebookclaim.com/

alephnerd 3y ago

> Could this have happened with Twitter for example? It did - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/09/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-accused-of-ignoring-plight-of-rohingya-in-tweets-promoting-myanmar https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/09/twitter-c... FB was much more destructive simply because it was part of FB's Internet.org initiative [1] which drove FB adoption. > It’s not clear to me how much the government wanted the genocide to happen. The Arakan National Party, the primary party in Rakhine/Arakan, is anti-Rohingya and its leadership participated in the 2012 riots along with the 969 movement. They entered a coalition with the National League for Democracy (Aung Sang Syu Ki's party) and even got an Ethnic Affairs Minister [2] - that they held on to during the Genocide. That said, the issues in Rakhine were further exacerbated by the India-China rivalry, as both countries turned a blind eye to the Tatmadaw and would arm ethnic militias within Rakhine and across Myanmar in general, as Myanmar is a buffer between the two countries, ethnic issues in Myanmar blowback across Southwest China (eg. Kokang Chinese * ) and Northeast India (eg. Manipur Ethnic Violence **), and both India and China have competing defense and infrastructure projects within Myanmar [3] A lot of this could have been avoided if Jinnah annexed the Rohingya majority regions of Rakhine into Pakistan like Rohingya asked in 1946 [4]. It's sadly another forgotten chapter of Partition and decolonization of the British Raj * If you live in San Francisco, most ethnic Chinese in Chinatown are now Kokang. They own most of those trendy Burmese restaurants like Burma Love and Manadaly ** The Myanmar subgroup of the Kukis (Chin/Zo) have a significant presence in SF and Daly City as well. [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org [2] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arakan_National_Party https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arakan_National_Party [3] - https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/how-china-india-bangladesh-could-be-drawn-myanmar-s-conflict https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/how-china-indi... [4] - https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/rohingyas-and-the-unfinished-business-of-partition/ https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/rohingyas-and-the-unfinished...

tjpnz 3y ago

>The whole situation is awful. I do wonder what the internal discussions in Facebook at the time were like. What's the bare minimum we can do while making it look like we're doing something?

hifromwork 3y ago

>I do wonder what the internal discussions in Facebook at the time were like. We're going to learn that in part III, btw ("Next up: Part III: The Inside View").

anon84873628 3y ago

>Though I guess those discussions/emails would be very unlikely to come out except in a court case and I’m not sure what case that would be. There is a class action lawsuit against Meta by Rohingya people: https://www.rohingyafacebookclaim.com/ https://www.rohingyafacebookclaim.com/