5/22/22, 5:59 PM How Facebook’s Rise Fueled Chaos and Confusion in Myanmar | WIRED Still, the company continued its work with seemingly little local input. One of its most public stumbles came four months after the meeting in May, when it began to remove posts and suspend users for posts including the term “kalar,” a Burmese word often used as a slur for people of South Asian origin. The word, however, is also used in other non-offensive phrases like “kalar pae,” lentil beans, or “kala-awe thee” a type of particularly spicy chili. While well intentioned, the process showed a profound lack of familiarity with the Burmese language and the context of language use. It also angered members of the tech community helping flag dangerous content, because they were blamed by upset users for the policy, though they were not involved with the initiative and were unaware that it would start. “We’ve had trouble enforcing this policy correctly recently, mainly due to the challenges of understanding the context; after further examination, we’ve been able to get it right. But we expect this to be a long-term challenge,” Richard Allen, a Facebook vice president of public policy wrote in a post on the company’s website. A person with knowledge of Facebook’s Myanmar operations was decidedly more direct than Allen, calling the roll out of the initiative “pretty fucking stupid.” LYDIA ORTIZ/PATRICK RAFANAN M I S L E A D I N G FAC E B O O K P O S TS continue to trigger confusion, threats of violence, and government overreach in Myanmar. Consider the case of journalist and translator Aung Naing Soe, who in November 2016 was targeted online after users began circulating a picture they claimed showed him standing with members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. The militant group attacked police posts in October 2016 and again in August 2017, sparking the massive campaign against the Rohingya that has driven hundreds of thousands to neighboring Bangladesh. (Disclosure: Aung Naing Soe was my translator for an article I wrote, which was published by the NewYorker.com in April.) Aung Naing Soe was not in the photo, and it took several attempts and flags for Facebook to finally remove the post. Copies of it still circulate on the platform. Other posts targeted his religion and work as a journalist. Vermont’s Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy raised the case during Zuckerberg’s testimony in April: One post aimed at Aung Naing Soe, he said, “calls for the death of a Muslim journalist. Now, that threat went straight through your detection systems, it spread very quickly, and https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-and-confusion-in-myanmar/ 12/16