Media giant’s Myanmar mess
Far from pulling people together, it did the opposite and now rights groups want a fix
FACEBOOK has long promoted itself as a tool for bringing people together to make the world a better place. Now the social media giant has acknowledged that, in Myanmar, it did the opposite and human rights groups say it has a lot of work to do to fix that.
Facebook failed to prevent its platform from being used to “foment division and incite off-line violence” in the country, one of its executives said in a post on Monday, citing a human rights report commissioned by the company. “We agree that we can and should do more,” wrote Alex Warofka, a Facebook product policy manager. He also said Facebook would invest resources in addressing the abuse of its platform in Myanmar that the report outlines.
The report, by Business for Social Responsibility, or BSR, which is based in San Francisco, paints a picture of a company that was unaware of its own potential for doing harm and did little to figure out the facts on the ground.
The report details how Facebook unwittingly entered a country new to the digital era and still emerging from decades of censorship, all the while plagued by political and social divisions. But the report fails to look closely at how Facebook employees missed a crescendo of posts and misinformation that helped to fuel modern ethnic violence in Myanmar.
The report recommends that Facebook increase enforcement of policies for content posted on its platform, exercise greater transparency with data that shows its progress, and engage with civil society and officials in Myanmar.
Some Facebook detractors criticised the company on Tuesday for releasing the report on the eve of the midterm elections in the US, when the attention of the news media and many of Facebook’s most vocal critics was elsewhere. Human rights groups said Facebook’s pledge needed to be followed up with more concrete actions. “There are a lot of people at Facebook who have known for a long time that the company should have done more to prevent the gross misuse of its platform in Myanmar,” said Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights, a non-profit human rights organisation that focuses on Southeast Asia.
“This assessment is encouraging and overdue, but the key to any assessment is implementation,” Smith said. Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said Facebook’s actions in Myanmar would be “the acid test” to see if it becomes “a responsible platform manager with its own enforceable code of conduct”.
In response to a question about the timing of the release of the report, Facebook said it had previously committed to publishing the report at this time. It also said the report was in line with the company’s commitment to respond to growing concerns in Myanmar.
Two years after the 2016 election in the US put the company under heightened scrutiny, Facebook has introduced a series of experiments meant to address the problem of misinformation on its platform. It has also set up fact-checking groups and altered its advertising practices to bar those who spread false news.
But the company still faces scrutiny from lawmakers who say it is not doing enough. In some countries, Facebook’s experiments have helped to amplify fake stories, while its slower response in other developing countries, including Sri Lanka, has allowed rumours to spark violence. Facebook has also faced sharp criticism for being too slow to act in the Philippines, another country where its ubiquity has led it to become a platform for spreading hate speech and false information.
In Myanmar, Facebook essentially is the internet – and, by extension, the only source of information – for some 20 million people, according to BSR’S estimates. Mobile phones sold there already have Facebook installed. As Facebook’s presence in Myanmar grew in recent years, the company did not address what the BSR report calls a “crisis of digital literacy” in a country that was just emerging from a military dictatorship and where the internet was still new.
Many citizens in Myanmar, the report says, still do not know the basics of the internet – from using a browser to setting up an email account – and are not equipped to distinguish real information from rumour. The report warns that this could continue to be a problem for Facebook, especially during the country’s general elections in 2020.
New problems could also arise related to Whatsapp, the messaging app owned by Facebook, which is becoming popular in Myanmar.
Whatsapp has begun to play a leading role in elections, particularly in developing countries where it is being used by political parties, religious activists and others to spread information.
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