Facebook says it didn't do enough to prevent "offline violence" in Myanmar
Facebook says it didn't do enough to prevent
"offline violence" in Myanmar
November 5, 2018, 11:16 PM
Facebook said Monday that an independent report it
commissioned found the company hasn't always done enough to prevent its
platform from being used to spread hate speech that has fueled deadly violence
in Myanmar.
The report, conducted by the nonprofit Business for
Social Responsibility, also offered Facebook recommendations for helping
improve human rights in the country, including stricter enforcement of content
policies and regular publishing of data related to human rights violations.
"The report concludes 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," Alex Warofka, Facebook product
policy manager, wrote in a blog post Monday. "We agree that we can and
should do more."
The report comes amid reports of widespread genocide
being committed by the military in Myanmar. In March, United Nations human
rights experts investigating violence in the country concluded that Facebook played
a "determining role" in the crisis, in which hundreds of thousands
Rohingya Muslims have fled the country.
David Mathieson, an independent analyst who has lived and
worked in the region for years, told CBSN earlier this year that social media
has been "one of the most damaging aspects of this entire crisis."
BSR recommended Facebook improve enforcement of its
community standards, which describe what is and isn't allowed on the social
network. Facebook said that central to achieving this is its near-complete
development of a team that understands local Myanmar issues along with policy
and operations expertise.
Facebook said it's using the social-listening tool
CrowdTangle to analyze potentially harmful content and understand how it
spreads in Myanmar. The company is also using artificial intelligence to
identify and prevent the spread of posts that contain graphic violence or
dehumanizing comments.
Preserving and sharing data that can be used to help
evaluate human rights violations was also suggested, especially data specific
to the situation in Myanmar so the international community can better evaluate
the company's enforcement efforts.
"We are committed to working with and providing
information to the relevant authorities as they investigate international human
rights violations in Myanmar, and we are preserving data for this
purpose," Warofka wrote, noting it took this approach with content and
accounts associated with the Myanmar military it removed in August and October.
Another recommendation includes the establishment of a
policy that defines Facebook's approach to content moderation with respect to
human rights, a suggestion Warofka said Facebook is "looking
into."
The U.N.'s top human rights officials recommended in
August that Myanmar military leaders be prosecuted for genocide against
Rohingya Muslims. More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar's
Rakhine state since rebel attacks sparked a military backlash in August 2017.
U.N. investigators have reportedly found numerous crimes
committed against the minority in Myanmar, including gang rape, enslavement,
torching villages and killing children. Roughly 10,000 people have reportedly
been killed in the violence, and tens of thousands have fled the country.
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