Christina Fink
Rakhine State security operations as ethnic cleansing. Yet most residents of
Myanmar are not sympathetic.32 Through state media and Buddhist-nationalist
Facebook pages, they only saw the accounts of displaced and traumatized Buddhists
and Hindus who were justifiably terrified of the Rohingya militants. Thus, many
citizens voiced support on Facebook for the counterinsurgency operations.
Facebook’s Breach of Ethics
What has been Facebook’s response to the use of its platform to spread dangerous speech? In short, too little too late. Facebook’s Community Standards use
the term hate speech rather than dangerous speech. They define hate speech as
“content that directly attacks people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin,
[or] religious affiliation,” among other things.33 They state that hate speech is not
allowed, “because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion and in
some cases may promote real-world violence.”34 Much of the anti-Muslim rhetoric
posted on Facebook in Myanmar from 2012 onward clearly met these criteria but
remained on Facebook. The company should have been on high alert given the
volatile context in Myanmar and the high profile of some of those posting.
In June 2017, Facebook announced that it would take hate speech in Myanmar
and elsewhere much more seriously, asserting that it recognized the importance
of understanding local contexts and would increase the number of content
reviewers.35 Yet, even in September 2017, Facebook did not immediately react
when chain messages circulated on Facebook Messenger—an instant messaging
application associated with Facebook—warning Buddhists to arm themselves in
preparation for Muslim attacks and vice versa. Local rights- and IT-oriented civilsociety organizations alerted Facebook but four days elapsed between the appearance of the messages and their removal.36 Facebook’s own monitoring mechanisms
had apparently not caught the messages and responded slowly even after being
notified.
At the same time, Facebook may be applying uneven policies in Myanmar.
Ultranationalists such as Wirathu were able to propagate hate speech on their
Facebook pages with little consequence, but Rohingya bloggers have claimed that
Facebook has been quick to suspend or close their accounts for posting graphic
photographs documenting the military’s human-rights abuses and voicing criticism
of the military.37
As of mid-2018, Facebook did not have a content-monitoring office in
Myanmar; its Burmese language content reviewers lived abroad.38 In an April 2018
open letter, concerned civil-society groups called for the company to be much more
transparent regarding its monitoring mechanisms, policies, and actions.39 In June
2018, Facebook blacklisted two ultranationalist monks and the largest Buddhist
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