Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 52 (2020)
Crime as Cognitive Constraint
all Rohingya, including civilians and children, as “ARSA terrorists”76
continues to maintain a Facebook presence. 77 It is unclear as to how
Facebook interprets its Community Standards definition of “dangerous
organizations” 78 to justify the ban of one account while allowing others
to stand.
Other Facebook services were also used. In a notable example, two
versions of a chain message were distributed through Facebook
messenger in September 2017. 79 One version called on Buddhists to
“unite” against the common enemy in light of a supposedly planned
jihad attack by Muslims on September 11 of that year. 80 Another
version contained the same message but with the actors reversed;
Muslims were warned of a supposed impending attack by the MaBaTha
and other ultranationalists on the same date. 81 In an interview with
Vox in April 2018, Mark Zuckerberg shared that Facebook’s “systems”
were able to detect this Facebook Messenger scam. 82 Myanmar civil
society organizations pushed back in an open letter addressed to
Zuckerberg, arguing that the effective “systems” that he was describing
were, in fact, the very same organizations that were alerting Facebook
on the matter days after the fake content had already been widely
shared. 83 For years, civil society groups served as de facto monitors,
flagging problematic content to Facebook officials. 84 This underscored
76.
Id. ¶ 1335.
77.
The page has over 90,000 followers as of February 2020. The Global New
Light of Myanmar (@TheGNLM), FACEBOOK, (Feb. 18, 2020),
https://www.facebook.com/TheGNLM/.
78.
See Banning More Dangerous Organizations from Facebook in Myanmar,
(Feb.
5,
2019),
FACEBOOK
https://about.fb.com/news/2019/02/dangerous-organizations-inmyanmar/.
79.
Detailed Findings of the FFM, supra note 7, ¶ 1348.
80.
Id.
81.
Id.; John Reed, Hate speech, Atrocities, and Fake News: The Crisis of
Democracy in Myanmar, FINANCIAL TIMES (Feb. 22, 2018),
https://www.ft.com/content/2003d54e-169a-11e8-9376-4a6390addb4.
82.
Jen Kirby, Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s Role in Ethnic Cleansing in
Myanmar:
‘It’s
a
Real
Issue,’
Vox
(Apr.
2,
2018),
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17183836/mark-zuckerberg-facebookmyanmar-rohingya-ethnic-cleansing-genocide.
83.
Open letter from Myanmar civil society organizations, to Mark
Zuckerberg,
CEO
of
Facebook
(Apr.
5,
2018),
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rs02G96Y9w5dpX0Vf1LjWp6B9mp32
VY-/view.
84.
Steve Stecklow, Why Facebook is Losing the War on Hate Speech in
(Aug.
15,
2018),
Myanmar,
REUTERS
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmarfacebook-hate/. At one point, members of Myanmar civil society would
157