For years , an ethnical cleanup campaign by Myanmar ’s Buddhistic majority against its Muslim Rohingya has buck the state apart . Facebook has present scrutiny for its persona in the spread of false entropy that prod violence . On Monday , it announced that it has ban several members of the Myanmar armed services and organizations that were named by the United Nations as complicit in the genocide .
Facebook ’s action mechanism come up within the hours following issue of aUN Human Rights Council Reportthat mention Myanmar ’s commander - in - chieftain and five generals as complicit party in the mass killing and crowd rapes of Muslim Rohingya with “ genocidal intent . ” Throughout the report , the Human Rights Council cites specific Facebook posts containing faux selective information and propaganda as having a office in sparking the violence .
As far back as 2014 , human rights activists have told Facebook that its platform was being used to go around hearsay and call for violence against the nonage Rohingya universe . According to theUN account , hundreds of thou of Rohingya have flee the country to live in refugee camps , many give way along the way due to injuries they sustained in attack by mobs or the Myanmar military . Sexual violence has been hold out on a monumental scale . At least 392 small town have been partially or completely destroyed . And at least 10,000 hoi polloi have been murder . The UN is now calling for leader in the Myanmar military — which has de facto restraint over the country ’s government — to be tried for genocide through a court or referral to theInternational Criminal Courtin the Hague .
After the UN released its study , Facebook write ablog poststating that it is banning 20 mortal and organizations from Facebook in Myanmar . It said that it has not found a presence on Facebook or Instagram for some of the subject of its ban , but it is “ remove a total of 18 Facebook account , one Instagram account , and 52 Facebook Pages ” that are followed by almost 12 million the great unwashed . It named Senior General Min Aung Hlaing , commander - in - chief of Myanmar ’s armed force , and the military ’s Myawady television web as being subject to the Bachelor of Arts in Nursing .
Earlier this summer , Wiredchronicled the calamity in Myanmar and traced Facebook ’s use in it as far back as 2014 . From the beginning , Facebook ’s failure has been impute to its want of moderation and inability to realize Myanmar ’s political relation and cultivation . After one C of people participated in riots and assail a Islamic tea leaf shop owner who was incorrectly accused of raping a Buddhist employee , Facebook ’s director of insurance for the Asia - Pacific part said the companionship ’s immediate plan was to quicken the translation of its user guidelines and code of conduct into Burmese . It take 14 month for that interlingual rendition to be complete , and the violence has intensify since then .
In the yesteryear , Facebook has not been willing to say how many people it has working to moderate content in Myanmar or how many Burmese speaker unit it utilise to conduct its mental object reviews . OnJuly 18 , it denote that it would begin remove misinformation that could lead to forcible fury . In August , Reuterspublished an in - depth flavour at the troupe ’s moderation bankruptcy and slow reception .
In addition to citing many Facebook posts that were mean to spread false information and incite violence , the UN report card specifically calls for an probe into Facebook ’s response . One passagereads :
The role of social media is important . Facebook has been a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hatred , in a context of use where for most users Facebook is the Internet . Although improved in late calendar month , Facebook ’s response has been slow and ineffective . The extent to which Facebook posts and messages have lead to real - world favouritism and wildness must be independently and thoroughly examine . The Mission regrets that Facebook is unable to provide country - specific information about the spreadhead of hatred language on its platform , which is imperative to assess the adequacy of its response .
In its post on Monday , Facebook acknowledged some of its failures writing , “ While we were too slow to act , we ’re now making progress – with better engineering science to identify hatred speech , amend coverage tools , and more citizenry to review content . ” It also read that it face a hard post because “ so many people there rely on Facebook for selective information — more so than in almost any other country establish the nascent State Department of the news program medium and the recent rapid adoption of nomadic phones . ”
The recognition that Facebook is a elementary tidings platform for the people of Myanmar is a bit of a surprise for the social meshing that fights tooth and nail against any asseveration that it ’s a media company . The International Republican Institute conducteda surveyin Myanmar last year that found 38 percent of residents claimed they get their news from Facebook . We ’ve reached out to Facebook to inquire how many people it forecast are getting their news from the platform and to clear up if it mean people are sharing connection or directly publishing un - vetted tidings . We did not receive an immediate reply . ( See update below . )
We also asked if Facebook intends to free a complete tilt of the individuals and organizations that are subject to today ’s ban . Further , we asked how many account Facebook has remove in totality after finding ties to wildness in Myanmar .
Update 4 PM , August 27th : A Facebook representative sent us the following result to our questions –
Earlier this calendar month , weshared an update on our workin Myanmar and noted that we have more than 60 Myanmar language expert reviewing subject and we ’ll have at least 100 by the closing of this year .
We do n’t know how many multitude in Myanmar get their news from Facebook , but we have approximately 18 million people from Myanmar on the program .
And on full remotion , it ’s 18 Facebook accounts , 1 Instagram account and 52 Facebook Pages , observe by almost 12 million citizenry .
The full list of people and organisation that have been banned includes :
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing
တပ္မေတာ္ကာကြယ္ေရးဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္႐ုံး ( CINCDS )
Vice Senior General Soe Win
Brigadier General Khin Maung Soe
Brigadier General Aung Aung
Brigadier General Than Oo
Lt . Gen. Aung Kyaw Zaw
Major General Aung Myo Thu
Major General Maung Maung Soe
Brigadier General Thura San Lwin
Major Thant Zaw Win
Officer Tun Naing
Border Guard Police Corporal Kyaw Chay
Staff Sergeant Ba Kyaw
Khin Hlaing ( 99th LID Leader )
Thant Zin Oo
33rd Light Infantry Division
99th Light Infantry Division
Myawaddy
Phay Sit Gyi
We ’re not sharing the list of Pages and accounts engaged in coordinated Inauthentic Behavior at the bit , as we ’re work to understand whether there may be more related to action and we do n’t need deal the names to hamper those efforts .
[ UN , Facebook , Bloomberg ]
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