Facebook defensive after Myanmar civil groups blast CEO Zuckerberg
Facebook apologised on April 6 to Myanmar civil society groups who took issue with the social media network’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s defense of the platform’s record on curbing hate speech roiling the country, AFP reported.
Facebook has been battered by allegations that its platform has helped fuel communal bloodshed in Myanmar, a mainly Buddhist country accused of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims.
On April 5, six Myanmar organisations published an open letter criticising an interview Zuckerberg gave with news site Vox this week. In it he cited examples of both Myanmar Buddhists and Muslims spreading “sensational” messages on Facebook Messenger that warned of imminent violence from the other community.
“That’s the kind of thing where I think it is clear that people were trying to use our tools in order to incite real harm. Now, in that case, our systems detect that that’s going on. We stop those messages from going through,” Zuckerberg was quoted as saying.
In their letter, the six local tech and human rights organisations said they were surprised to hear Zuckerberg “praise the effectiveness” of Facebook’s systems in Myanmar.
“It took over four days from when the messages started circulating for the escalation to reach you,” said the groups, who had flagged the content to Facebook.
“Far from being stopped, they spread in an unprecedented way, reaching country-wide and causing widespread fear and at least three violent incidents in the process.”
A Facebook spokesman conceded the company was too slow in responding to reports about the incendiary messages.
“We should have been faster and are working hard to improve our technology and tools to detect and prevent abusive, hateful or false content,” the spokesman said.
“We are sorry that Mark did not make clearer that it was the civil society groups in Myanmar who first reported these messages,” he added.
In their joint letter, the local groups said Facebook’s response to hate speech and vicious rumours in Myanmar has been inadequate for years, adding that their offers to help craft broader solutions have gone unanswered.
They urged the social media giant to add reporting mechanisms to the Messenger app, increase transparency, engage more with local stakeholders and draw on data and engineering teams to identify repeat offenders.
[caption id="attachment_31099" align="alignleft" width="300"] Courtesy of Dave Gilbert and Violet Cho, students at the Australian National University[/caption] Facebook apologised on April 6 to Myanmar civil society groups who took issue with the social media network’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s defense of the platform’s record on curbing hate speech roiling the country, AFP reported. Facebook has been battered by allegations that its platform has helped fuel communal bloodshed in Myanmar, a mainly Buddhist country accused of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims. On April 5, six Myanmar organisations published an open letter criticising an interview Zuckerberg gave with news site...
Facebook apologised on April 6 to Myanmar civil society groups who took issue with the social media network’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s defense of the platform’s record on curbing hate speech roiling the country, AFP reported.
Facebook has been battered by allegations that its platform has helped fuel communal bloodshed in Myanmar, a mainly Buddhist country accused of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims.
On April 5, six Myanmar organisations published an open letter criticising an interview Zuckerberg gave with news site Vox this week. In it he cited examples of both Myanmar Buddhists and Muslims spreading “sensational” messages on Facebook Messenger that warned of imminent violence from the other community.
“That’s the kind of thing where I think it is clear that people were trying to use our tools in order to incite real harm. Now, in that case, our systems detect that that’s going on. We stop those messages from going through,” Zuckerberg was quoted as saying.
In their letter, the six local tech and human rights organisations said they were surprised to hear Zuckerberg “praise the effectiveness” of Facebook’s systems in Myanmar.
“It took over four days from when the messages started circulating for the escalation to reach you,” said the groups, who had flagged the content to Facebook.
“Far from being stopped, they spread in an unprecedented way, reaching country-wide and causing widespread fear and at least three violent incidents in the process.”
A Facebook spokesman conceded the company was too slow in responding to reports about the incendiary messages.
“We should have been faster and are working hard to improve our technology and tools to detect and prevent abusive, hateful or false content,” the spokesman said.
“We are sorry that Mark did not make clearer that it was the civil society groups in Myanmar who first reported these messages,” he added.
In their joint letter, the local groups said Facebook’s response to hate speech and vicious rumours in Myanmar has been inadequate for years, adding that their offers to help craft broader solutions have gone unanswered.
They urged the social media giant to add reporting mechanisms to the Messenger app, increase transparency, engage more with local stakeholders and draw on data and engineering teams to identify repeat offenders.
