5/22/22, 6:58 PM Zuckerberg Was Called Out Over Myanmar Violence. Here’s His Apology. - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/business/facebook-myanmar-zuckerberg.html Zuckerberg Was Called Out Over Myanmar Violence. Here’s His Apology. By Kevin Roose and Paul Mozur April 9, 2018 Last week, after frustrated activists from Myanmar sent an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, they got something unexpected: a reply. The activists, representing six civil society organizations, harshly criticized Mr. Zuckerberg in the letter, saying he had mischaracterized Facebook’s response to violence-inciting messages in Myanmar and had not devoted sufficient resources to enforcing its hate speech rules in the violence-stricken country. Mr. Zuckerberg wrote back to the group the next day from his personal email address, apologizing for misspeaking and outlining steps that Facebook was taking to increase its moderation efforts. Mr. Zuckerberg’s email, which was provided to The New York Times by the activist groups, was the chief executive’s first direct communication with the local groups that have criticized Facebook’s role in the country’s growing humanitarian crisis. Facebook has been accused by United Nations investigators and human rights groups of facilitating violence against Rohingya Muslims, a minority ethnic group, by allowing anti-Muslim hate speech and false news to spread on its platform. Facebook is a dominant source of information in Myanmar, and civil society groups have accused it of being a kind of absentee landlord, with few moderators and systems in place to keep extremists from using Facebook posts to incite violence. In his email, Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook had added “dozens” of Burmese language content reviewers to monitor reports of hate speech and had “increased the number of people across the company on Myanmar-related issues,” including a product team working on building tools to try to help stem the violence there. Daily business updates The latest coverage of business, markets and the economy, sent by email each weekday. Get it sent to your inbox. The disagreement centers on a chain letter that spread on Facebook Messenger in Myanmar in September. The messages warned Buddhist communities of an imminent Muslim attack. Meanwhile, Muslim populations received a separate message cautioning them of violence from militant Buddhist groups. Civil society groups say the messages paralyzed major cities in Myanmar and raised fears of a violent clash. Such incitement and scaremongering have become far too typical on Facebook, according to the groups, which say Facebook has repeatedly failed to follow through on promises to devote more resources to the issues. In an interview last week, Mr. Zuckerberg appeared to hold up the September episode as a model of Facebook’s effectiveness, and said the company’s systems had detected the messages and stopped them. In fact, the activists said, they flagged the messages repeatedly to Facebook, barraging its employees with strongly worded appeals until the company finally stepped in to help. Rohingya refugees reaching Malaysia this month. Civil society groups in Myanmar have said Facebook doesn’t do enough to keep extremists from using posts to incite violence. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/business/facebook-myanmar-zuckerberg.html?mtrref=undefined 1/3