9/24/21, 8:16 PM Why Facebook is losing the war on hate speech in Myanmar  ARMY CRACKDOWN: A car stands next to a house that was burned down in Maungdaw in Rakhine State last year during a military campaign that the United States has denounced as ethnic cleansing. Human rights activists and researchers say they warned Facebook for years that its platform was being used to spread hate speech against Muslims in Myanmar. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun Schissler belonged to a private Facebook group that was set up so that Myanmar human rights activists, researchers and company employees such as Asia Pacific policy chief Garlick could discuss how to cope with hate speech and other issues. The activists brought up numerous problems with Facebook’s multi-step reporting system for problematic content. As one example, they cited a photograph of an aid worker in Rakhine State in a post that called him “a traitor to the nation.” It had been shared 229 times, according to messages reviewed by Reuters. One of the private group’s members had reported it to Facebook as harassment of an individual but later received a message back: “We reviewed the photo you reported for containing hate speech or symbols and found it doesn’t violate our Community Standards.” After multiple complaints by activists over six weeks, a Facebook employee finally explained to the activists that the takedown request was rejected because the photo had been reported, but not the comment above it. It eventually was taken down. In March 2015, Schissler gave a talk at Facebook’s California headquarters about new media, particularly Facebook, and antiMuslim violence in Myanmar. More than a dozen Facebook employees attended, he said. Two months later, Madden, the tech entrepreneur, gave a talk at Facebook headquarters about tensions and violence between Buddhists and Muslims. He said he showed a doctored picture that had spread on Facebook of the country’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is Buddhist, wearing a Muslim head scarf. The image, Madden said, was meant to imply she was sympathetic to Muslims – a “very negative message” in Myanmar. “The whole point of this presentation was really just to sound the alarm, to show very vividly the context in which Facebook was operating, and already the evidence of how it was being misused,” he said. He left the meeting thinking his audience took the talk seriously and would take action. ”May the Rakhine people … and all Myanmar citizens be free from the dangers of sons of a dog, grandchildren of a pig kalar, and rapists” September 2013 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-facebook-hate/ 7/13