Facebook Inc. did not do enough to prevent the incitement of violence in Myanmar, according to an independent human rights assessment that the social-media giant commissioned.
“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. We agree that we can and should do more,” Facebook’s product policy manager, Alex Warofka, wrote in a blog post published late Monday.
Facebook FB, -1.11% has been cited by United Nations human rights experts as playing a role in spreading hate speech that instigated widespread violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority, resulting in thousands of deaths and the flight of around 700,000 Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, according to a Reuters report earlier this year. “I’m afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast,” one U.N. investigator said.
In August, a Reuters special report described how Facebook for years failed to heed warnings about how its site was being used in Myanmar, and failed to police thousands of posts, images and comments that violated Facebook’s hate-speech policy, leading to an organized campaign of violence against the Rohingya.
In Monday’s blog post, Warofka said Facebook commissioned an investigation into its actions by the San Francisco-based nonprofit Business for Social Responsibility.
The BSR report acknowledged that Facebook has taken some corrective actions, and noted that Facebook alone cannot resolve the situation in Myanmar. But it warned that Facebook must brace for a likely misinformation campaign for Myanmar’s 2020 elections, prepare for repercussions from the wider use of WhatApp, and urged better enforcement of Facebook’s community standards.
Warofka said Facebook is using artificial intelligence to help it find and root out comments and images that contain graphic violence, as well as spam and “sensational” content, as it beefs up its efforts to weed out hate speech.
The BSR also recommended Facebook create a standalone human rights policy and invest in digital literacy in Myanmar.
In Myanmar, Facebook is essentially synonymous with the internet, and the population of around 20 million is still developing its digital literacy, the BSR report said, making it difficult for many people to differentiate between real news and misinformation.
“We know we need to do more to ensure we are a force for good in Myanmar, and in other countries facing their own crises,” Warofka said.
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