BSR | Human Rights Impact Assessment: Facebook in Myanmar 35 SECURITY As specified in Article 3 of the UDHR and Article 20 of the ICCPR, everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person, and advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence should be prohibited by law. Risk / Opportunity Severity Factors Management Factors What is the potentially adverse human rights impact that might happen in the future? Scope (How many people could be affected by the harm/opportunity?) Likelihood (How likely is the impact to happen over next five years?) Scale (How serious are the impacts for the victim?) Attribution (How closely is Facebook connected to the impact?) Remediability (Will remedy restore the victim to same or equivalent position?) Hate speech (including coordinated content intended to promote offline violence) may be posted on the Facebook platform, but not discovered and removed. Misinformation and disinformation that is intended to incite or exacerbate violence or coordinate harm may be posted on the Facebook platform, but not discovered and removed. Content intended to harass users— for example, by threatening participants in public discourse to intimidate or silence them—may be posted on the Facebook platform, but not discovered and removed. WhatsApp may be increasingly used to spread hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation, with bad actors attracted to the encrypted nature of communications content. Accounts being used to spread hate speech, incite violence, or coordinate harm may not be identified and removed, or may be rapidly replaced by new “fake accounts” undertaking the same activities. Facebook products (such as Messenger, “Secret”/ “Closed” Groups, WhatsApp) may be used in conflict-affected areas to share information and plans. User data illegitimately acquired from Facebook’s platform (e.g., via hacking or phishing) may be inappropriately used to violate the security of persons. Scope: There are around 20 million Facebook users in Myanmar. These security risks only impact a subset of Facebook users—especially vulnerable groups such as women, minorities, human rights defenders, and political activists—but the population at risk is still large in number. Scale: The consequences for the victim are severe, with lives and bodily integrity placed at risk from incitement to violence. Remediability: Access to remedy is available, most notably through the prompt removal of content. However, remedy is not guaranteed to restore the victim to the previous position—for example, bodily harm may already have occurred, the offending content may remain known, or content could be reposted. In addition, remedy is more challenging in the context of WhatsApp, given the encrypted nature of communications content. Leverage (How much ability does Facebook have to effect change?) Likelihood: There is a high likelihood of these risks occurring in practice (they have occurred in the past and are happening today), with heightened likelihood associated with the 2020 elections and the recent action taken by Facebook against the military officials. However, Facebook’s efforts to remove content and accounts that violate Community Standards, combined with many peacebuilding, counter speech, and digital literacy efforts, may reduce likelihood over time. Attribution: Facebook itself does not cause or contribute to these risks via its own actions—rather, Facebook is directly linked to them via the actions of users on its platform that violate Facebook’s Community Standards. Leverage: Facebook has leverage available via machine- and humanbased efforts to implement Community Standards. Facebook can also contribute to digital literacy efforts aimed at improving security online. However, Facebook’s leverage is significantly curtailed by the historical, political, and conflictbased local context that is often the root cause of security risks. It is worth noting that Facebook also has significantly less leverage regarding WhatsApp, owing to the encrypted nature of communications content.