Peace Prize of which there have been calls for her to be stripped given her inadequate response to the crisis—has even called reports of the crimes “fake news.” Her office has itself used Facebook to disseminate inflammatory content contradicted by reports from local journalists. International law in this context also lacks teeth. Myanmar is one of the 26 states that has not ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and therefore has not committed itself to the obligation to ensure that corporations respect the human rights of people within its territory. It is also not a state party to the Rome Statute, which makes it hard (absent a U.N. Security Council referral) for International Criminal Court prosecutors to bring charges for crimes against humanity. (However, a filing published earlier this month argues that the ICC has jurisdiction because the crime of deportation is occurring on the territory of Bangladesh, a state party.) Of course, Facebook is also not a party to these conventions: It is not a state, despite growing comparisons to that effect. As such, these international human rights instruments do not bind it directly. In some ways, then, the Myanmar crisis is just another incarnation of the difficulty international law has had in holding multinational corporations accountable for the impacts of their operations on rights. The U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights were developed in order to help bridge this gap. But the principles are nonbinding, and Facebook is not legally liable if it fails to adopt them. The Guiding Principles do, at least, create a framework for thinking about Facebook’s responsibilities--including its duty to not contribute to human rights abuses, conduct due diligence on its human rights obligations and provide transparency into its impacts. These obligations are reflected in the complaints of the Burmese civil society organizations in their open letter, and Zuckerberg’s commitments to Congress would go some way towards meeting them. “Dozens” more Burmese language reviewers will help, but in comparison, Facebook said it would hire an additional 3,000 moderators by the end of 2018 and open a second content moderation center in Germany when the country passed laws threatening large fines if hate speech wasn’t removed within 24 hours. This is a stark differential, and one that seems unlikely to be wholly justified by reference to the estimated number of users in each country alone (14 million in Myanmar, compared with 39 million in Germany in 2017). Furthermore, these newfound commitments suggest systems have been inadequate for the intervening years, and underline the necessity of monitoring their effective implementation. Moreover, there are some features of Facebook’s business that make it a more difficult case than the typical multinational corporation. It operates in many countries without any physical presence at all—meaning that in states in which the government does want to regulate Facebook, its options and leverage are much more limited. In Sri Lanka, for example, officials found Facebook unresponsive to official concerns about hate speech and misinformation on its platform until the government blocked access entirely. The head of public information told the New York Times that big companies like Facebook “look at us only as markets … We’re a society, we’re not just a market.” This is the second way Facebook is distinguishable from other multinational corporations—its dominance in these markets means it becomes the de facto public sphere. It is not just like any other commercial product: It is integral to the flow of information. Finally, Facebook’s global reach means that these individual markets are insignificant to the company as a whole. Facebook has become integral to Myanmar, but Myanmar matters very little to Facebook. A Broader Conversation It’s important to avoid the urge to oversimplify this issue. Myanmar’s example raises difficult questions, factually, legally, and philosophically. The exact nature and extent of Facebook’s contribution to the spread of violence in Myanmar is unknown and perhaps unknowable. The connection between hate speech and mass atrocities does have a long and bloody history in the 20th century alone. Nazi Julius Streicher’s anti-Semitic articles in Der Stürmer were found by the Nuremberg Tribunal to have “infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism and incited the German people to active persecution.” “Hate radio” played a key role in the Rwandan genocide, and villages with access to radio broadcasts had increased participation in the killings. As Samantha Power has written, “[k]illers often carried a machete in one hand and a transistor radio in the other.” So U.N. investigators have precedent of declaring that the spread of hate speech through Facebook has had a “determining role” in the violence in Myanmar. Academic studies are shedding light on the correlation, as is journalism. In a recent article about recent outbreaks of violence in Sri Lanka, Amanda Taub and Max Fisher of the New York Times “found that Facebook’s newsfeed played a central role in nearly every step from rumor to killing. Facebook officials, [interviewees said], ignored repeated warnings of the potential for violence, resisting pressure to hire moderators or establish emergency points of contact.” But correlation is not causation, factually or legally. As Susan Benesch has written, “[t]he idea that inflammatory speech is a catalyst for genocide is widely believed, likely correct and of no small importance … But the impact of speech on groups is complex, and difficult to measure or prove.” Ethnic violence existed in Myanmar long before Facebook arrived, and Facebook is hardly the most culpable actor in the spread of misinformation and hate speech. Facebook’s mission to “bring more people online and help improve their lives” is not a fig leaf but a noble goal, in many cases realized. People in Myanmar rely on Facebook for much of their communication, as do news outlets and journalists for getting important information out. The platform is becoming increasingly important for local businesses. Even if it were possible, it is by no means clear that Myanmar would be better off if Facebook exited the country tomorrow.