In Myanmar, Facebook Has Failed Miserably

Facebook has been struggling for months to deal with hate speech that fueled the violence against the country’s Rohingya ethnic group in Myanmar (just take a look at this piq from January). Again this month, the social media giant pledged to remedy the problem by hiring more Burmese-speaking staff and investing in tools to automatically detect problematic content, admitting that so far it has been "too slow" in addressing the issue.

The company statement came right after Reuters dropped its eye-opening investigation that revealed how miserably Facebook has failed at thwarting attempts to use its services to spread hatred and violence in Burmese society. Reuters reporters dug through the social media site to find countless examples of content that vilified and incited violence against Rohingya, some as old as six years.

"Reuters found more than 1,000 examples of posts, comments and pornographic images attacking the Rohingya and other Muslims on Facebook. A secretive operation set up by the social media giant to combat the hate speech is failing to end the problem," said the bombshell report.

This brilliant muckraking by Reuters also brought attention to the sparse resources Facebook has devoted so far to tackle the issue. In 2015, for example, the company’s staff included only two Burmese-speakers who reviewed the posts flagged by users. Currently, Facebook doesn’t have any permanent employees in Myanmar, instead outsourcing the work to a Kuala Lumpur company.

Reuter's work investigates the truth and holds those in power directly to account. Hopefully, it will also help bring about an actual change. Setting an important precedent for the platform's future moderation decisions, a week after the story hit the headlines, Facebook banned a number of Myanmar military officials, including the army chief, in response to a UN report that called for the country’s military leadership to be investigated and prosecuted for genocide.