It did not take long before this online vitriol developed into threats against Michael’s life: “Later that day, someone sent me a message with a wink saying ‘you might want to see this’ – it was a picture of my opened passport info page with a diatribe against me – it had already been shared around 200 times when I saw it. People were saying that this guy has to be killed. Get him out of the country. It was specifically on Facebook only that this was circulating.” Within hours, the risks to Michael’s life were seen as so severe that the United Nations warned him that his life was in immediate danger and that he needed to leave the country immediately.141 The IIFFMM, in its final report on 12 September 2018, concluded that “[t]he Myanmar authorities, including the Government and the Tatmadaw, have fostered a climate in which hate speech thrives, human rights violations are legitimized, and incitement to discrimination and violence facilitated”; adding, “[t]he role of social media is significant.”142 The IIFFMM also emphasized this was in a context where the rapid dominance of Facebook’s platform in the country had meant that “Facebook is the Internet”. The IIFFMM report lamented Meta’s failure to provide transparent and comprehensive data in relation to advocacy of hatred spread through its platform in Myanmar, and recommended that “[t]he extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination and violence must be independently and thoroughly examined.”143 One month after the IIFFMM highlighted the “significant” role played by the Facebook platform, Meta published an independent human rights impact assessment (HRIA) of its presence in Myanmar conducted by Business for Social Responsibility (BSR).144 The HRIA acknowledged that Facebook played a role in the violence against the Rohingya in the following terms: “Facebook has become a useful platform for those seeking to incite violence and cause offline harm. Though the actual relationship between content posted on Facebook and offline harm is not fully understood, Facebook has become a means for those seeking to spread hate and cause harm, and posts have been linked to offline violence. A minority of users is seeking to use Facebook as a platform to undermine democracy and incite offline violence, including serious crimes under international law; for example, the Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar describes how Facebook has been used by bad actors to spread anti-Muslim, anti-Rohingya, and anti-activist sentiment.”145 Following the publication of the HRIA, a Meta representative acknowledged in respect of Myanmar that “prior to this year, we weren’t doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence. We agree that we can and should do more.”146 This HRIA is analysed further in Sections 6.3 and 8.3. As demonstrated by the reports and testimonies cited above, the Facebook platform was awash with discriminatory, dehumanizing, and hateful anti-Rohingya content in the months and years leading up to August 2017, and throughout the 2017 atrocities themselves. This content, which included advocacy of hatred directed against the Rohingya, was inherently harmful from a human rights perspective, resulting in direct impacts on the rights to equality and non-discrimination (as analysed further in Chapter 8, below). The volume and scale of these anti-Rohingya narratives also created a significant risk that this content could result in the enactment of real-world violence. This connection is analysed in the following section. 141 Amnesty International interview via video call with Michael (pseudonym), 28 March 2022. IIFFMM, “Report of the independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar”, 12 Sep 2018, A/HRC/39/64 (hereafter “IIFFMM, Final Report”), paras. 73 & 74. 142 143 IIFFMM, Final Report, paras. 73 & 74. 144 BSR, “Human Rights Impact Assessment: Facebook in Myanmar”, 2018. 145 BSR, “Human Rights Impact Assessment: Facebook in Myanmar”, 2018, p.24. Meta, “An Independent Assessment of the Human Rights Impact of Facebook in Myanmar”, 5 November 2018, about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria 146 THE SOCIAL ATROCITY META AND THE RIGHT TO REMEDY FOR THE ROHINGYA Amnesty International 31