16 Policy Brief No. 78 Toda Peace Institute A belated awakening In April 2018, after being called out by the UN, Myanmar civil society, the US congress and the US media, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook had been too slow to respond to the abuse and weaponisation of its platform in Myanmar. He pledged to dedicate more resources as well as to establish a cross functional team to mitigate the risks of Facebook contributing to real world harm in Myanmar. In the months since, Facebook has ramped up its efforts in the country, including hiring a dedicated Myanmar public policy team, increasing content reviewer capacity, rolling out Burmese language AI classifiers and engaging far more widely with local civil society. Recommendations Whilst Facebook’s failure to effectively mitigate risks has had particularly drastic consequences in Myanmar, the Myanmar experience with the platform is not unlike what many other countries across the global south experienced with Facebook, as well as other similar platforms. The following section draws on the experience of Myanmar to derive actionable lessons and recommendations for social media companies and civil society: To Social Media Companies: 1. Prioritise human rights due diligence Facebook commissioned a Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIA) for Myanmar in 2018 – more than five years after the company was first informed that its platform was being actively weaponised and only after Facebook had been widely criticised for facilitating a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Though the recommendations were helpful, they came much too late and nearly one and a half years on, are still to be fully implemented.  Social Media companies should commission country-level HRIAs, regardless of whether they have a physical presence in a country, as soon as they become available in a market – and at the latest before they become mainstream. These assessments should consider how the company may be contributing to adverse human rights impact, not only through its product(s) but also through its staffing and operations. These should be conducted by an independent third party, involve consultation with local civil society and rights holders, and be released publicly, in their integrality. At a minimum, HRIAs should be renewed every five years, unless the human rights situation evolves or the company is made aware of widespread human rights concerns linked to its product(s) or operations.  Social Media companies should further develop country-level human rights risk mitigation strategies. These should identify specific risk mitigation measures for each of the risks identified in the HRIA, and lay out clear targets, timelines and responsibilities for operationalisation. The implementation of these strategies should