Serrato’s analysis showed that activity within the anti-Rohingya group, which has 55,000 members, exploded with posts registering a 200% increase in interactions. 1 2 ‘Facebook definitely helped certain elements of society to determine the narrative of the conflict in Myanmar,’ Serrato told the Guardian. ‘Although Facebook had been used in the past to spread hate speech and misinformation, it took on greater potency after the attacks.’ 3 4 5 *** 6 Alan Davis, an analyst from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting who led a two-year study of hate speech in Myanmar, said that in the months before August he noticed posts on Facebook becoming ‘more organised and odious, and more militarised.’ 7 8 9 His research team encountered fabricated stories stating that ‘mosques in Yangon are stockpiling weapons in an attempt to blow up various Buddhist pagodas and Shwedagon pagoda,’ the most sacred Buddhist site in Yangon in a smear campaign against Muslims. These pages also featured posts calling Rohingya the derogatory term ‘kalars’ and ‘Bengali terrorists.’ Signs denoting ‘Muslim-free’ areas were shared more than 11,000 times. 10 11 12 13 *** 14 Davis said … ‘I think things are so far gone in Myanmar right now ... I really don’t know how Zuckerberg and co sleep at night. If they had any kind of conscience they would be pouring a good percentage of their fortunes into reversing the chaos they have created.’142 15 16 17 18 19 117. 2017: • 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 The Myanmar military used Facebook to justify the “clearance operations” in “In a post from the official Facebook page of the Office of the Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief, … [a Myanmar parable about a camel which gradually takes more and more space in his merchant’s tent, until eventually the merchant is forced out] was explained in detail in connection with the issue of the Rohingya in Rakhine State…. Prior to its deletion by Facebook in August 2018, the post had almost 10,000 reactions, over 6,000 shares and 146 comments.”143 142 Libby Hogan, Michael Safi, Revealed: Facebook hate speech exploded in Myanmar during Rohingya crisis, THE GUARDIAN (Apr. 2, 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/revealed-facebook-hate-speech-exploded-inmyanmar-during-rohingya-crisis. 143 UNHRC Report, ¶ 1312, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1643079/files/A_HRC_39_CRP-2-EN.pdf. CLASS ACTION COMPLAINT 47 Case No. __________________