{"id":12207,"date":"2021-10-07T12:03:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T12:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/?p=12207"},"modified":"2021-10-09T12:05:37","modified_gmt":"2021-10-09T12:05:37","slug":"facebooks-role-in-myanmar-and-ethiopia-under-new-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/?p=12207","title":{"rendered":"Facebook\u2019s role in Myanmar and Ethiopia under new scrutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Whistleblower Frances Haugen adds to long-held concerns that social media\u00a0site is fueling violence and instability<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: The Guardian<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

October 7, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whistleblower Frances Haugen\u2019s testimony to US senators on Tuesday<\/a> shone a light on violence and instability in Myanmar and Ethiopia in recent years and long-held concerns about links with activity on Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we saw in Myanmar and are now seeing in Ethiopia<\/a> are only the opening chapters of a story so terrifying, no one wants to read the end of it,\u201d Haugen said in her striking testimony. Haugen warned that Facebook was \u201cliterally fanning ethnic violence\u201d in places such as Ethiopia because it was not policing its service adequately outside the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About half of Myanmar\u2019s population of 53 million use Facebook, with many relying on the site as their primary source of news. In June this year, an investigation by the rights group Global Witness<\/a> found that Facebook\u2019s algorithm was promoting posts in breach of its own policies that incited violence against protesters marching against the coup launched by the military in February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers began by liking a Myanmar military fan page, which was not seen to be violating Facebook\u2019s terms. They found that Facebook<\/a> then suggested several pro-military pages that did contain abusive content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have to look hard to find this content; FB\u2019s algorithm led us to it,\u201d said Rosie Sharpe, a digital researcher who worked on the report. \u201cOf the first five pages they recommended, three of them contained content that broke FB\u2019s rules by, for example, inciting or glorifying violence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The link between social media posts and offline violence in Myanmar had already been widely documented. In 2018 a Guardian analysis revealed<\/a> that hate speech exploded on Facebook at the start of the Rohingya crisis the year before, when attacks by armed groups and ordinary communities on people from the Muslim minority erupted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands of posts by nationalist, anti-Rohingya supporters gained traction online, including posts which falsely claimed mosques were stockpiling weapons. An independent investigation commissioned by Facebook later agreed with assessments<\/a> that the site had been used to incite offline violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat happens on Facebook matters,\u201d Sharpe said. \u201cPromotion of violence online leads to real-world harms. That\u2019s particularly true in Myanmar<\/a>, where Facebook has admitted that it played a role in inciting violence during the military\u2019s genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook has faced similar criticism in Ethiopia, which has been engulfed in an armed conflict between the federal government and the Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front (TPLF). In 2019, for instance, the retired Ethiopian runner Haile Gebrselassie blamed \u201cfake news\u201d being shared on Facebook<\/a> for violence that left 81 people dead in Oromia region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After another outbreak of ethnic violence in 2020 \u2013 sparked by the killing of a popular singer from the Oromo ethnic group \u2013 an investigation by Vice<\/a> claimed that the violence had been \u201csupercharged by the almost-instant and widespread sharing of hate speech and incitement to violence on Facebook, which whipped up people\u2019s anger\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her testimony Haugen blamed engagement-based ranking for \u201cliterally fanning ethnic violence\u201d in countries like Ethiopia. \u201cFacebook \u2026 knows, they have admitted in public, that engagement-based ranking is dangerous without integrity and security systems, but then not rolled out those integrity and security systems to most of the languages in the world,\u201d Haugen said. And that\u2019s what is causing things like ethnic violence in Ethiopia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sharpe said legislators were not doing enough to hold social media companies to account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe EU has gone the furthest towards doing this. There\u2019s draft legislation in the EU, the digital services act. If it was passed it would require very large online platforms to have to assess and mitigate the risk of their algorithms spreading content that impacts on our rights. However, the proposed law doesn\u2019t go far enough as it would only give regulators the opportunity to scrutinise how algorithms work when they suspect wrongdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook has pushed back forcefully against Haugen\u2019s accusations. In a blogpost<\/a> published on Tuesday evening its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said \u201cit\u2019s just not true\u201d that the company puts profit over safety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whistleblower Frances Haugen adds to long-held concerns that social media\u00a0site is fueling violence and instability Source: The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[32,77],"class_list":["post-12207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-english","tag-the-guardian"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318.jpg",890,534,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318.jpg",300,180,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318.jpg",640,384,false],"large":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318.jpg",640,384,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318.jpg",890,534,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318.jpg",890,534,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318.jpg",825,495,false],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318.jpg",590,354,false],"woocommerce_thumbnail":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"woocommerce_single":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318.jpg",600,360,false],"woocommerce_gallery_thumbnail":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/318-100x100.jpg",100,100,true]},"author_info":{"info":["Axumawian Media"]},"category_info":"News<\/a>","tag_info":"News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12209,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12207\/revisions\/12209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}