Report: Facebook urges offline violence in Myanmar


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Rohingya ethnic minority man watches Facebook on his mobile phone

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Facebook has been called the equivalent of the internet in Myanmar

Facebook said that he was in agreement with a report that he had found that he had not managed to prevent his platform from being used to "incite violence offline" in Myanmar.

The independent report, commissioned by Facebook, said the platform had created a "favorable environment" for the proliferation of human rights violations.

This comes after the widespread violence against the Rohingya minority which, according to the UN, could constitute genocide.

The report says Facebook will have to "do it right" before the 2020 elections.

Facebook has more than 18 million users in Myanmar. For many, the social media site is their main or only way to get and share news.

The network said it had made progress in solving its problems in Myanmar but that there remained "a lot to do".

Last year, the Myanmar Army launched a violent crackdown in Rakhine State after Rohingya militants had conducted deadly attacks on police stations.

Thousands of people have died and more than 700,000 Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh. There are also numerous allegations of human rights violations, including arbitrary killings, rape and burning of land.

Rohingya are considered illegal migrants in Myanmar (also known as Burma) and have been discriminated against by the government and the public for decades.

The new report was commissioned after the UN accused Facebook of being "slow and inefficient" in its response to the spread of online hate.

The 62-page independent report by the non-profit organization Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) revealed that the platform "has become a way for those seeking to spread hatred and harm" to Myanmar.

"A minority of users are looking to exploit Facebook as a platform to undermine democracy and incite violence offline."

He added that Facebook should apply more strictly its existing policies on hate speech, set up an "autonomous human rights policy" and better dialogue with the Myanmar authorities.

The report – which only briefly mentions the Rohingya – also warned that the 2020 elections posed a serious risk of further human rights violations and warned Facebook to now prepare for "multiple contingencies" .

"Facebook is the Internet"

Nick Beake, BBC correspondent in Myanmar, Yangon

For many in Myanmar, Facebook is the Internet.

After five decades of obsolete state propaganda, a feast of interactive and colorful news has arrived. But as noted by UN human rights experts, ultranationalist Buddhists have seized Facebook as a powerful means of inciting violence against Muslims.

A scary example came back in 2014 when a fake online story about a Muslim man allegedly raping a Buddhist woman sparked deadly clashes in Mandalay's second city.

Facebook has since admitted to doing nothing more to stem the tides of racist publications in the years that followed.

In August of this year, the same UN experts concluded that the incendiary material that the Burmese people had exposed daily had played a role in the army's purge of Rohingya Muslims from the state. of Rakhine – an attack that the UN considers a genocide.

Facebook's product policy manager, Alex Warofka, said in a statement: "We agree that we can and must do more."

"We have invested a lot … to examine and combat Facebook abuses in Myanmar."

He added that Facebook "examined" the establishment of a human rights policy and facilitated the reporting and removal of violent content or incentives.

Warofka said the company now employs Burmese language specialists to examine potentially sensitive content.

Much of Myanmar communicates online with the help of Zawgyi police, which is not easily translated into English. Therefore, its use makes it harder to detect bad content.

Facebook has removed Zawgyi as a language option for new users and supports the transition from Myanmar to Unicode, the international standard for text encoding.

Facebook has already banned several military and government figures from Myanmar who, he said, had "inflamed ethnic and religious tensions."

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