amounted to advocacy of hatred, in the months and years leading up to August 2017. Sawyeddollah, a 21year-old Rohingya refugee and youth activist, explained how he started to see a huge increase in content targeting the Rohingya on the platform after he ‘added’ individuals from other ethnic groups as Facebook friends: “I started seeing different things on Facebook, some things related to Rohingya people… The writing was in Burmese – it said, ‘there is no Rohingya [race] in Myanmar’. I was seeing this post from many people. I thought, what is happening to these people? Why are they posting against us? Why are they against Rohingya people? I started seeing more and more – about ‘Bengali’ people, that we are not from Myanmar. It said, ‘if they stay here, we will be under their control’. A lot of hate speech, a lot of false news.”117 A number of UN bodies, NGOs, and media organizations have documented some of the vast quantity of antiRohingya content, including content amounting to incitement to violence, discrimination, and genocide, which circulated on Facebook in advance of and during the 2017 atrocities. In the months and years leading up to August 2017, content that spread dehumanizing, hateful and discriminatory views towards the Rohingya – oftentimes portraying genocidal intent – was rife on the Facebook platform throughout Myanmar.118 This content, which encouraged and justified violence and discrimination against the Rohingya, was posted by a variety of actors, including senior government and military officials, prominent civilian hate groups and figures, including radical Buddhist nationalist groups such as Ma Ba Tha, and ‘news’ pages, groups, and other accounts with large followings. The IIFFMM documented “over 150 online public social media accounts, pages and groups [that] regularly spread messages amounting to hate speech against Muslims in general or Rohingya in particular”.119 According to the IIFFMM, these were just a “small sample of the kinds of messages that have circulated in Myanmar in recent years”.120 Many of the examples cited by the IIFFMM contained explicit death threats and promises of violence against the Rohingya, and frequently used dehumanizing language such as Kway Kalar (“Muslim dog”), which was also frequently used by the Myanmar military during the 2017 atrocities. 121 Some of the viral posts cited by the IIFFMM received enormous amounts of engagement. In one such example: “Dr. Tun Lwin, a well-known meteorologist with over 1.5 million followers on Facebook, called on the Myanmar people to be united to secure the “west gate” and to be alert “now that there is a common enemy”. He further stated that Myanmar does not tolerate invaders. As of August 2018, the post had 47,000 reactions, over 830 comments, and nearly 10,000 shares. Several comments called for immediate “uprooting” and “eradication” of the Rohingya, citing the situation in Rakhine State as a “Muslim invasion”.”122 Over 1,000 posts, comments, images and videos attacking the Rohingya and other Muslims in Myanmar – some of which had been up on the platform since 2012 – were documented and analysed by Reuters news agency and the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law in August 2018.123 One illustrative post cited by the Reuters investigation which had been on Facebook since 2013 stated, “We must fight them the way Hitler did the Jews, damn kalars!”; another example cited a post which stated, “These non-human kalar dogs, the Bengalis, are killing and destroying our land, our water and our ethnic people.”124 117 Amnesty International interview by video call with Maung Sawyeddollah, 6 April 2022 IIFFMM, Reuters, Ray Serrato, Phandeeyar See, for example: UN Human Rights Committee, Report of the detailed findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, 18 September 2018, UN Doc A/HRC/39/CRP.2; Ray Serrato cited in The Guardian, “Revealed: Facebook hate speech exploded in Myanmar during Rohingya crisis, 3 April 2018, theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/revealed-facebook-hate-speech-exploded-in-myanmar-during-rohingya-crisis; Reuters, ”Why Facebook is losing the war on hate speech in Myanmar”, 15 August 2018, reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-facebook-hate/ 118 UN Human Rights Council, Report of the detailed findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar, 17 September 2018, UN Doc A/HRC/39/CRP.2, para 131. 119 UN Human Rights Council, Report of the detailed findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar, 17 September 2018, UN Doc A/HRC/39/CRP.2 , para 1311. 120 UN Human Rights Council, Report of the detailed findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar, 17 September 2018, UN Doc A/HRC/39/CRP.2 para 1326. 121 UN Human Rights Council, Report of the detailed findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar, 17 September 2018, UN Doc A/HRC/39/CRP.2 , para 1326. 122 Reuters, “Why Facebook is losing the war on hate speech in Myanmar”, 15 August 2018, reuters.com/investigates/specialreport/myanmar-facebook-hate 123 Reuters, ”Why Facebook is losing the war on hate speech in Myanmar”, 15 August 2018, reuters.com/investigates/specialreport/myanmar-facebook-hate 124 THE SOCIAL ATROCITY META AND THE RIGHT TO REMEDY FOR THE ROHINGYA Amnesty International 28