1 should have done a couple of years ago,’ she said.”193 “When hate speech against the Rohingya 2 minority in Myanmar spread virulently via Facebook in Burmese (a language spoken by some 42 3 million people) Facebook was slow to act because it had no hate-speech detection algorithm in 4 Burmese, and few Burmese-speaking moderators. But since the Rohingya genocide, Facebook 5 has built a hate-speech classifier in Burmese by pouring resources toward the project. It paid to 6 hire 100 Burmese-speaking content moderators, who manually built up a dataset of Burmese hate 7 speech that was used to train an algorithm.”194 8 9 10 146. Recent revelations show, however, that Facebook continues to ignore the harm its algorithms and product inflict in developing countries. A September 2021 Wall Street Journal article based on leaked internal Facebook documents reported: 11 Facebook treats harm in developing countries as ‘simply the cost of doing business’ in those places, said Brian Boland, a former Facebook vice president who oversaw partnerships with internet providers in Africa and Asia before resigning at the end of last year. Facebook has focused its safety efforts on wealthier markets with powerful governments and media institutions, he said, even as it has turned to poorer countries for user growth. 12 13 14 15 ‘There is very rarely a significant, concerted effort to invest in fixing those areas,’ he said. 16 *** 17 An internal Facebook report from March said actors including some states were frequently on the platform promoting violence, exacerbating ethnic divides and delegitimizing social institutions. ‘This is particularly prevalent—and problematic—in At Risk Countries,’ the report says. 18 19 20 It continues with a header in bold: ‘Current mitigation strategies are not enough.’195 21 22 David Ingram, Facebook’s new rapid response team has a crucial task: Avoid fueling another genocide, NBC (June 20, 2019), https:/www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-snew-rapid-response-team-has-crucial-task-avoid-n1019821 (emphasis added). 194 Billy Perrigo, Facebook Says It’s Removing More Hate Speech Than Ever Before, But There’s a Catch, TIME (Nov. 27, 2019), https://time.com/5739688/facebook-hate-speechlanguages/. 195 Justin Scheck, Newley Purnell, Jeff Horwitz, Facebook Employees Flag Drug Cartels and Human Traffickers. The Company’s Response Is Weak, Documents Show, WALL STREET JOURNAL (Sept. 16, 2021), https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-drug-cartels-humantraffickers-response-is-weak-documents-11631812953. 193 23 24 25 26 27 28 CLASS ACTION COMPLAINT 62 Case No. __________________