The “Weaponization” of Facebook in Myanmar: A
Case for Corporate Criminal Liability
NERIAH YUE†
The advent of social media platforms in the mid-2000s increased global communication and
encouraged innovative activism by ushering new, effective ways to organize and protest. News
agencies have recently reported the misuse of these platforms by individual actors and
authoritarian regimes. Autocrats, in particular, twist social media platforms into weapons to
silence dissent and spread hate speech. The latter category, hate speech, has contributed to some
of the gravest human rights abuses globally. The increased spotlight on the weaponization of
social media has motivated scholars, states, and companies to revisit the theory of corporate
responsibility.
This Note unpacks the potential criminal liability of social media companies for misuse on their
platforms that result in grave human rights violations. Specifically, it explores Facebook’s
corporate criminal liability in light of authoritarian regimes’ misuse of its platform to incite
crimes against humanity. This Note will not cover jurisdictional issues regarding corporate
criminal liability. Rather, it identifies on a theoretical level, which crimes, if any, social media
corporations could be held accountable for under international criminal law. While there remain
significant obstacles to prosecuting such cases, this Note identifies an accountability gap between
Facebook’s actions and victims of human rights abuses that occur from its platform. Ultimately,
this Note concludes that corporate criminal liability is an effective form of ensuring that social
media companies remain responsible in doing their part to uphold human rights.
† J.D. Candidate 2020, University of California, Hastings College of the Law; Executive Managing
Editor, Hastings Law Journal. Thank you to my parents for their steadfast encouragement and support. My
sincere thanks to Professor Chimène Keitner for her invaluable feedback, and to Gian Gualco-Nelson, Emily
Tripodi, and the Notes team at the Hastings Law Journal for their helpful comments and edits.
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