Facebook and hate speech elsewhere

In one week, Facebook was blamed for allegedly playing a role in suspected genocide against Rohingya Muslims in

Myanmar, and accused by the Sri Lankan government of spreading hate speech that led to deadly anti-Muslim riots.

On Monday, a UN official charged that Facebook had substantively contributed to the conflict in Myanmar, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been driven out of the country amid numerous reports of mass murder by government soldiers. Another UN official, Yanghee Lee, said Monday she suspected that killings of Rohingya amounted to genocide.

Facebook, Lee alleged, was used by “ultra-nationalist Buddhists” to incite “a lot of violence and a lot of hatred against the Rohingya,” Reuters reported. On Wednesday, The Guardian reported that the government of Sri Lanka had accused Facebook of failing to stop the spread of hate speech that Sri Lankan officials believe contributed to anti-Muslim riots last week that killed three people and led to a state-of-emergency declaration in the South Asian island nation.

Facebook flew a team to Sri Lanka to meet Thursday with Sri Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and other government officials, The Guardian reported. The company told this news organization Wednesday that it was “responding to the situation in Sri Lanka” and was working with the government and nongovernmental organizations to support the identification and removal of any hate speech or incitement to violence on its platform.

Reports suggested that the Sri Lankan government had shut down social media access during the riots. Facebook told this news organization Wednesday that it was “concerned with the way access to the internet is being restricted and depriving people of important connections and expression.”