Deflection (Click for more details) (1 ene 2014 año – 31 dic 2015 año)

Descripción:

In early 2014 the situation was getting worse. We launched the Panzagar campaign (‘flower speech’) to rally opposition to hate speech. Together with Aela, Htaike Htaike Aung visited Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters and met with the compassion team. At the same time, working with Matt Schissler, we got connected to a professor at Harvard, Susan Benesh, who was heading the Dangerous Speech Project. Susan arranged for Matt to present on the Myanmar situation to Facebook staff in March 2014, and, together with Matt and Aela, helped bring us into a group call with the compassion team. The compassion team responded to our concerns by offering to localize their tool for reporting objectionable content. They worked with all of us over the course of a few months to refine and translate the reporting flow. By the end of 2014, Facebook had a Burmese language reporting tool - but it was a road to nowhere: they did not have the capacity to review user reports. In May 2014, we were told by Facebook that they only had a lone Burmese language reviewer. According to Reuter, this grew to 2 by February 2015, and eventually to 4 by the time Myanmar went through its general elections, in November 2015. At that point, Facebook had 7.5 million users and abuse, fueled by Ma Ba Tha’s race and religion law campaign as well as the elections, was widespread.

The link between online content and offline violence was also becoming increasingly clear by then. A fake rumor of rape, shared by Wira Thu, had triggered major riots in the city of Mandalay in 2014, leaving two dead. This had led the government to shut down Facebook and call in an emergency forum. Facebook’s APAC Head of Public Policy, who oversaw Myanmar, took her first official trip to the country on this occasion. She visited a few more times subsequently.

We kept warning Facebook that the problem was one of organized hate that wouldn’t get solved just with translated policies (they localized their community standards) or guidance on how to behave online (they commissioned a series of campaign resources and videos). Matt Schissler and David Madden, then CEO of Phandeeyar, each made a trip to Menlo Park in March and May 2015 respectively, to stress the risks and potential consequences for the country. Matt was asked by a Facebook employee if he thought a genocide against the Rohingya was possible. He said yes.

Our warnings were clear, but Facebook wasn’t listening. Rather than to invest in improving and scaling their enforcement capacity, the company focused its interventions on public facing activities with high PR potential, which deflected its responsibility and shifted the burden for security onto users, who were regularly portrayed in conversations as either not behaving properly, or not doing enough to report violations.

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