Myanmar groups blast Facebook’s Zuckerberg over hate speech inciting real-world violence
On Thursday six organisations published an open letter criticising an interview the social media platform founder gave with news site Vox this week
Facebook apologised on Friday to Myanmar civil society groups who took issue with Mark Zuckerberg’s defence of the platform’s record on curbing hate speech roiling the country.
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 Thursday 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.