Note: This was originally published as the daily newsletter at the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer
Three years ago, a United Nations’ fact-finding mission looking into what it called a genocide committed against the Rohingya community in Myanmar—which saw hundreds of thousands of people displaced, and more than ten thousand tortured, and killed—released a report looking into the causes of the violence. One of the contributing factors, the UN mission found, was hate speech and propaganda spread via Facebook pages and accounts, including some that were maintained by Myanmar’s military police, known as the Tatmadaw. Although Facebook eventually took action to ban some of the most egregious examples, UN observers said these accounts and pages were able to foment violence and hatred against the Rohingya for months, if not years.
Facebook admitted that its own report on the violence in Myanmar—prepared by an independent non-profit called Business for Social Responsibility, and released at the same time as the UN report—found “we weren’t doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence.” The company apologized for not doing more to prevent violence being fueled by its platform, and promised to expand its policies and add moderation in Myanmar. Some believe it needs to do a lot more, however: this week, in a multi-country effort, lawyers representing thousands of members of the Rohingya refugee community filed legal claims against Facebook demanding $150 billion in compensation for the harms their people suffered.
In the UK, the BBC reported that a British law firm representing some of the refugees has written a letter to Facebook, saying it plans to file a suit in Britain’s High Court because Facebook’s algorithms “amplified hate speech against the Rohingya people,”and that the company failed to hire moderators familiar with the political and cultural situation in Myanmar. The letter also claims that Facebook failed to “take appropriate and timely action” to remove posts or ban accounts that incited violence against the Rohingya. In the US, a law firm representing some Rohingya refugees filed a class action complaint in California, alleging that Facebook was “willing to trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration” in Myanmar.
Continue reading “Myanmar refugees sue Facebook for $150 billion”