5/27/22, 2:20 AM How activists are using Facebook in Myanmar for democratic ends, but Facebook itself also facilitated hate speech | LSE So… Burmese language content . However, a more active role in moderating content in turn raises challenging new questions (especially now under an authoritarian regime) about how Facebook ought to intervene in controlling the content of users. What lines should Facebook draw on moderating content, for example, of ethnic armed groups, or other violent movements who oppose the authoritarian government? It is also important however to examine the wider narratives surrounding Facebook’s actions in Myanmar. This can be illuminated to some degree through what writer and researcher Evgeny Morozov describes as ‘the folly of technological solutionism’: a widespread techno-deterministic narrative within industry, media and the public that societies can be free of social or political problems given the right applications of technological solutions. The rapid spread of technological affordances from, for example, the United States, Japan or Europe, to poorer countries such as Myanmar, and the role of technology companies in driving this, tends to be wrapped in an assumption of the inherent social, economic and cultural value of these affordances. Crucially, a narrative of digital ‘solutionism’ serves to ascribe agentic characteristics to different actors. In the case of positive outcomes, proponents of this narrative can ascribe those outcomes to the active intervention of companies and their digital affordances. Meanwhile, Facebook users are either bad agents who exploit technologies for nefarious purposes or are passive participants in the actual fight between technological progress and tyrannical states. In the case of Myanmar, Facebook could be both an active protagonist (in the fight for democracy) and an innocent observer (in the proliferation of hate speech). Such narratives have real world impact and in the case of Facebook’s role in Myanmar, the stakes are incredibly high. Facebook has had a virtual monopoly on social media use, and online information sharing, in a country with profound ongoing poverty and economic vulnerability. Therefore, questioning digital solutionism is crucial in both celebrating the creativity and bravery of Myanmar users, and refusing to allow Facebook to deflect responsibility for facilitating hate speech. This examination and critique of narratives of digital solutionism is also important beyond the case of Facebook in Myanmar. New waves of digital products will inevitably be introduced to Myanmar and other countries on the margins of the global economy, under both authoritarian and democratic regimes of the future. The case of Facebook demonstrates the dangers of unchecked narratives of digital solutionism and the associated overconfidence of companies as technological affordances transfer to new and vulnerable contexts. Myanmar’s political and economic future has become highly uncertain since the military coup. Heightened awareness of the dangers of digital solutionism may serve to help https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/seac/2021/06/23/how-activists-are-using-facebook-in-myanmar-for-democratic-ends-but-facebook-itself-also-facilitated-hat… 8/12