104 Hate Speech Ignited: Understanding Hate Speech in Myanmar have been using social media platforms to extend the reach of hate speech.735 Given the current deficiencies with the rule of law, legislative fixes are likely to be of limited use; however, eventually, Myanmar could potentially take a similar approach to Germany and regulate incitement on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, VK, WhatsApp, and require these companies to take down unlawful incitement content immediately and impose liability for those that do not. The failure of the state to meet its obligations, however, does not diminish the responsibilities of corporations like Facebook to act. As the discussion in Section III on the online dissemination of hate speech and its adverse impact on the lives of Myanmar’s ethnic and religious minorities and CSOs and HRDs shows, there are risks associated with the exponential growth and reach of social media corporations.736 The international human rights community has already noted the role of social media corporations in human rights violations in Myanmar with the FFM directing recommendations at Facebook and other businesses active in the country for their failure to prevent the occurrence of hate speech on their platforms.737 The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, similarly singled out Facebook for its role in incitement against the Rohingya in Myanmar.738 Given that the Guiding Principles require corporations including social media corporations to “respect human rights” and “act with due diligence to avoid infringing human rights and adverse impacts,”739 they are obligated to integrate human rights into their product in Myanmar.740 In the case of Facebook in Myanmar, human rights due diligence and review of their product’s impact on the ground did not happen until after the genocidal clearance operations had occurred against the Rohingya.741 CSOs and HRDs from the consultations spoke at length of reporting hateful content that violate the company’s community standards to no avail.742 Many said they met with Facebook employees following the waves of violence in Rakhine State.743 Over the years they have highlighted how state and non-state actors have misused their platform, and continue to do so, but to no avail.744 CSOs and HRDs shared information with the company, including identifying accounts, screenshots, and narratives but that the main removal of accounts did not happen until after the findings of the FFM and UN Special Rapporteurs publicized the company’s role in the persecution of Myanmar’s ethnic and religious minorities.745 Facebook finally commissioned BSR to conduct an independent human rights impact assess- ment on the role of Facebook in Myanmar in 2018.746 They accepted BSR’s findings that it was not doing enough to prevent “the platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence,” 735 736 737 738 739 740 741 742 743 744 745 746 FGD (January 2019 and December 2019); See also Part III of this report’s discussion of online dissemination via Facebook. Ibid. A/HRC/39/64. A/74/846, para. 41. Guiding Principles., para. 11. A/74/846, para. 42. See Mozur. See, e.g., FGD (January 2019 and December 2019). Ibid. Ibid. See BSR. Ibid.