UN believes Facebook contributed to hate speech in Myanmar

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United Nations researchers have accused Facebook of being instrumental in fueling hatred against Myanmar’s Rohingya people. Facebook says it is taking the matter seriously.

One of the UN teams investigating possible cases of genocide in the Asian country has said Facebook has “turned into a beast,” the BBC reported. During a presentation sharing interim findings, the chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry said that social media has “substantially contributed to the hate against the Rohingya people.”

He refers, among other things, to the hate messages on social media and according to him Facebook is the social medium par excellence. According to the UN, Facebook has done too little against hate messages, for example against Facebook pages of ultra-nationalist Buddhists in Myanmar.

Facebook has said in a response that there is no place for hate messages on its platform. According to a spokesperson, Facebook is taking the issue very seriously and has been working with experts in Myanmar for several years to reduce hate messages on the platform. Facebook has previously indicated that it has difficulty dealing with hate messages, because the context of the messages is sometimes not clear enough.

In Myanmar, about 700,000 Rohingya have fled the violence in the country since the summer of last year, after Myanmar military forces began actions against the Rohingya people in August last year. According to the UN, violence is not shunned. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, called these actions a typical example of ethnic cleansing last year. The Rohingya are a largely Muslim ethnic minority in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar.

Facebook has been under pressure for some time to do more against the spread of hate messages on its platform. For example, in the summer of last year, Germany passed a law that makes it possible to impose fines of up to fifty million euros if, for example, hate messages or fake news are not removed within 24 hours.

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