"A couple of hours outside Yangon, the country’s largest city, U Aye Swe, an administrator for Sin Ma Kaw village, said he was proud to oversee one of Myanmar’s 'Muslim-free' villages, which bar Muslims from spending the night, among other restrictions.
'Kalar are not welcome here because they are violent and they multiply like crazy, with so many wives and children,' he said.
Mr. Aye Swe admitted he had never met a Muslim before, adding, 'I have to thank Facebook because it is giving me the true information in Myanmar.'"
Facebook has nothing to do with Sin Ma Kaw having anti-Muslim laws, and Muslim free areas have been instituted by the Burmese army all over Myanmar since at least 2012. Ethnic cleansing and ethno-religious conflict with Rohingya has been happening and accelerating since before Facebook existed.
Widespread hatred for Muslims existed long before widespread usage of Facebook in Myanmar.
There’s also no evidence Facebook pulled Free Basics because of media pressure. Commercial reasons are obvious. Burmese now have a much larger mobile internet and phone market with better penetration, so Facebook doesn’t gain as much now.
"Users who sign up for Internet.org are required to sign up for Facebook first, and Free Basics works by not counting Facebook use against a limited data plan; therefore, if users do most browsing through Facebook, they can use the “internet” essentially for free."
Sure, connecting billions of underserved people to the internet is great and all, but it's all in the name of growing Facebook's user base and numbers. Any philantrophic / good will effort that has a business agenda behind it can't really be trusted. Not to mention putting Facebook as the access vehicle and introduction to the Internet for folks who have barely or never been connected before, is like giving drugs to a new born.
There are ways to get people connected to the Internet, without requiring them to "browse through Facebook", for example by spending your billions and building infrastructure. Try again, MZ.
> Any philantrophic / good will effort that has a business agenda behind it can't really be trusted.
Why? Most philanthropic ventures have agendas that aren't purely altruistic. If you don't call a particular agenda an agenda, it might be because you agree with it.
I think there’s something important to glean here. We’ve always seen Facebook driving trends in social media (or re-appropriating features from lesser groups). We are starting to see a near constant reactive Facebook. This is the beginning of the end for them.
There's several distinct issues intermingled in this reporting, muddying the lessons.
First, there's issue of ethnic violence in Myanmar, fueled by hate speech on and off of Facebook. While the article acknowledges that Facebook's digital distribution allowed hoax stories designed to incite ethnic violence to spread very fast, it says a lot about a society when isolated instances of trolling can lead to real people being killed. It said a lot about the US' fears and anxieties when foreign agents were discovered to have been generating content to amplify sectarian divisions, but it was also remarkable how similar their products were to organic content produced by various factions of true believers within the US. If domestic agents are posting hate speech in Myanmar, the only explanation is that Myanmar is a sharply divided tinderbox with many prejudices and preconceptions, and some people will latch onto a rumour that in their mind provides the necessary justification to commit violence and murder against another ethnicity. It's difficult for me to accept the article's insinuation that in such an environment, Facebook must somehow do more to counteract the undercurrents of society.
Then there's the issue of Facebook and certain websites being zero-rated on some phone networks. This is popular in countries where no organized lobby against it exists, and has been withdrawn in some places where activist groups have succeeded in framing it as a foreign company picking winners and losers. Zero-rating is the new frontier in net neutrality that was punted even in the US, where the old FCC never banned it outright, the new FCC is declining it investigate it, and telcos are vertically merging with content providers, which seems to lay the groundwork for more zero-rating to come.
> It's difficult for me to accept the article's insinuation that in such an environment, Facebook must somehow do more to counteract the undercurrents of society
Facebook went into a troubled situation to make money and made it worse. They don’t have to solve Myanmar’s problems. But if you’re getting paid to throw fuel on a fire, you accept liability for the houses it burns down.
When you know that society is a tinderbox where spreading rumors can get people killed, it might not be your fault, but it seems like a good idea to think twice before deploying a super-efficient rumor-spreading machine?
I'm not saying that there's any easy answer, but the idea that we should think ahead about the consequences of what we do and at least try to mitigate any harms doesn't seem so outlandish.
As to the first issue, the problem is deeper than one of Facebook merely mirroring existing cultural fissures. Facebook is functioning as an accelerant that's actively making it worse.
> it says a lot about a society when isolated instances of trolling can lead to real people being killed
In Bremen (Germany), maybe a week ago, a TV station aired a spot where they accused a man of being a pedophile. Even though they didn't disclose the location, the house where the man lived was identifiable for locals, and up to ten people went to the house, grabbed the man and nearly beat him to death. Later it came out that a) the man the mob identified and beat up wasn't the man from the TV spot and b) even the "real" suspect hadn't done anything illegal [0].
All societies are vulnerable to this kind of shit.
>It's difficult for me to accept the article's insinuation that in such an environment, Facebook must somehow do more to counteract the undercurrents of society.
Your conclusion is fairly bizarre given the explanation preceding it. If a country is "a sharply divided tinderbox with many prejudices and preconceptions, and some people will latch onto a rumour that in their mind provides the necessary justification to commit violence and murder against another ethnicity", isn't that all the more reason for entities like Facebook to take extreme care in how they disseminate information? If you're entering an area filled with flammable material, you should be doubly cautious about starting a fire.
> Are we now accusing Facebook for not having enough censorship power?
No, we’re accusing Facebook of selling ads next to a system known to prioritise sensational junk. When your ad platform rolls out before your moderation system, your priorities are wrong and you are morally culpable.
There is also the problem of disparate treatment. “‘Facebook is quick on taking down swastikas, but then they don’t get to Wirathu’s hate speech where he’s saying Muslims are dogs,’ said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division” [1].
This article talks about two issues at the same time: the first is Facebook's insidious "free basics" plan, which I'm 100% against, but the second is Facebook's role as an "accelerant" in Burma, for which I can't really blame them - censorship is pretty hard and you'll always have someone complaining.
> "Educating the world" should come before "connecting the world".
That's a scary thought in several ways. At the very least it's a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Also, it robs large groups of responsible people from beneficial communication tools because of how it's used by others. It often occurs with progress and advancement though, those that have it often only see the negative side of sharing. The positive side rarely gets coverage.
The thrust of the article kind of seems like it wishes Facebook was a better censor so it could more aptly shape the course of the society at hand in a better fashion and its hard to imagine a more backwards perspective.
Who can look at Zuckerberg and instead of thinking why would I want that guy deciding the course of my nations fate preceed to lament that he doesn't do so slightly differently.
It's ridiculous to cut Facebook services in Bolivia because of what's happening in Myanmar. In Bolivia, Facebook is the Internet. There's an opportunity here for a company to step into the breach. Tencent (WeChat) will ramp up in Myanmar, but Bolivia is a little far from their normal markets.
>“Perhaps Facebook should consider not aggressively getting more people online through its free internet program, and on its platform, until it has fully realized the scope of various ways it impacts a society, and often the whole nation,”
Imagine the amount of first world privilege you need to have to be able to say this with a straight face. While we're at it how about we don't spread education and vaccinations across developing countries as well, until we "fully realized the scope of various ways it impacts a society, and often the whole nation".
I’d love to hear someone’s analysis as to why these things happen. Like these major, major fuck ups by some super national organizations and governments. Is this due to scale? Lack of accountability? Perverted incentives?
I feel like some sort of super national government is needed. I hate the idea but like there needs to be some sort of counterweight to supernational organizations. Local governments trying to punish them is like a game of what-a-mole.
I feel like some sort of super national government is needed.
Only because you feel like your definition of human rights would win, likely because you're american (as I am).
Are you still for this if it meant China was the enforcer against the US? Are you ready for them to retaliate against us for citizens speaking out about CCP actions? The role and place of government, and even the idea that it is open to criticism, is a western idea. It is not a given that western ideas will continue to prevail (in fact, democracy is on the retreat worldwide).
This is an extraordinarily difficult situation that is developing at a very fast pace, so information to make the sort of analysis you are asking for is very difficult. As you have seen by the regional government inquests, most of our national leaders are struggling to keep up as well.
Here are a few observations:
1) the smartphone has become a technology vector to the most remote areas in the world, and its natural use case is communication
2) data is expensive, so expensive that many regions can not afford it regularly.
3) connectivity infrastructure is very expensive, and many developing regions customer base do not represent the revenues to support it.
4) Facebook and other services growth depend on reliable data connectivity
5) what started out as a way to launder facebooks ad inventory profits to carriers to provide free data so that Facebook and carrier networks could expand, turned into a cultural invasion
6) now areas who had not experienced the level of connectivity that Facebook affords are using it in radical and sometimes violent ways.
7) those local communities are struggling to regulate it while the broader developed world is shocked at the results
8) it turns out each region wants to regulate this in very different ways and have very different culturally accepted goals about communication as a whole. I.e. censorship hate speech etc.
9) the variety of cultures means that a global standard to filter and control communications is a kind of np complete problem. What is hate speech in one region may be free speech in another.
10) the best positioned and leveraged entities to provide the super-oversight are as of today, private for profit companies. This is likely a distasteful solution to many.
I'm not opposed to the idea either. I'd also like it to hold government ministers/officials personally responsible for a states breaches of basic human rights. But the problem lies in it's structure, accountability and execution. It would be very hard to make a stable system that was objective and neither corrupt nor possible to subvert in some way.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|7 years ago|reply
'Kalar are not welcome here because they are violent and they multiply like crazy, with so many wives and children,' he said.
Mr. Aye Swe admitted he had never met a Muslim before, adding, 'I have to thank Facebook because it is giving me the true information in Myanmar.'"
[1] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/world/asia/myanmar-roh...
[+] [-] simplecomplex|7 years ago|reply
Widespread hatred for Muslims existed long before widespread usage of Facebook in Myanmar.
There’s also no evidence Facebook pulled Free Basics because of media pressure. Commercial reasons are obvious. Burmese now have a much larger mobile internet and phone market with better penetration, so Facebook doesn’t gain as much now.
[+] [-] seattle_spring|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex3917|7 years ago|reply
"'We Must Protect The Pure Aryan Bloodline,' Says Child After 9 Minutes Of Unsupervised Facebook Access"
https://local.theonion.com/we-must-protect-the-pure-aryan-bl...
[+] [-] Jamerson|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hw|7 years ago|reply
Sure, connecting billions of underserved people to the internet is great and all, but it's all in the name of growing Facebook's user base and numbers. Any philantrophic / good will effort that has a business agenda behind it can't really be trusted. Not to mention putting Facebook as the access vehicle and introduction to the Internet for folks who have barely or never been connected before, is like giving drugs to a new born.
There are ways to get people connected to the Internet, without requiring them to "browse through Facebook", for example by spending your billions and building infrastructure. Try again, MZ.
[+] [-] throwawaymath|7 years ago|reply
Why? Most philanthropic ventures have agendas that aren't purely altruistic. If you don't call a particular agenda an agenda, it might be because you agree with it.
[+] [-] wmccullough|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temp-dude-87844|7 years ago|reply
First, there's issue of ethnic violence in Myanmar, fueled by hate speech on and off of Facebook. While the article acknowledges that Facebook's digital distribution allowed hoax stories designed to incite ethnic violence to spread very fast, it says a lot about a society when isolated instances of trolling can lead to real people being killed. It said a lot about the US' fears and anxieties when foreign agents were discovered to have been generating content to amplify sectarian divisions, but it was also remarkable how similar their products were to organic content produced by various factions of true believers within the US. If domestic agents are posting hate speech in Myanmar, the only explanation is that Myanmar is a sharply divided tinderbox with many prejudices and preconceptions, and some people will latch onto a rumour that in their mind provides the necessary justification to commit violence and murder against another ethnicity. It's difficult for me to accept the article's insinuation that in such an environment, Facebook must somehow do more to counteract the undercurrents of society.
Then there's the issue of Facebook and certain websites being zero-rated on some phone networks. This is popular in countries where no organized lobby against it exists, and has been withdrawn in some places where activist groups have succeeded in framing it as a foreign company picking winners and losers. Zero-rating is the new frontier in net neutrality that was punted even in the US, where the old FCC never banned it outright, the new FCC is declining it investigate it, and telcos are vertically merging with content providers, which seems to lay the groundwork for more zero-rating to come.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|7 years ago|reply
Facebook went into a troubled situation to make money and made it worse. They don’t have to solve Myanmar’s problems. But if you’re getting paid to throw fuel on a fire, you accept liability for the houses it burns down.
[+] [-] skybrian|7 years ago|reply
I'm not saying that there's any easy answer, but the idea that we should think ahead about the consequences of what we do and at least try to mitigate any harms doesn't seem so outlandish.
[+] [-] glenstein|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschuster91|7 years ago|reply
In Bremen (Germany), maybe a week ago, a TV station aired a spot where they accused a man of being a pedophile. Even though they didn't disclose the location, the house where the man lived was identifiable for locals, and up to ten people went to the house, grabbed the man and nearly beat him to death. Later it came out that a) the man the mob identified and beat up wasn't the man from the TV spot and b) even the "real" suspect hadn't done anything illegal [0].
All societies are vulnerable to this kind of shit.
[0]: https://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/inhalt.bremen-lynchmo...
[+] [-] Sangermaine|7 years ago|reply
Your conclusion is fairly bizarre given the explanation preceding it. If a country is "a sharply divided tinderbox with many prejudices and preconceptions, and some people will latch onto a rumour that in their mind provides the necessary justification to commit violence and murder against another ethnicity", isn't that all the more reason for entities like Facebook to take extreme care in how they disseminate information? If you're entering an area filled with flammable material, you should be doubly cautious about starting a fire.
[+] [-] bagosm|7 years ago|reply
Their response to the ordeal is way better than what I would expect, and I blame humanity more than the platform it uses to communicate.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|7 years ago|reply
No, we’re accusing Facebook of selling ads next to a system known to prioritise sensational junk. When your ad platform rolls out before your moderation system, your priorities are wrong and you are morally culpable.
There is also the problem of disparate treatment. “‘Facebook is quick on taking down swastikas, but then they don’t get to Wirathu’s hate speech where he’s saying Muslims are dogs,’ said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division” [1].
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/w...
[+] [-] skolemtotem|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeblow9999|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivm|7 years ago|reply
"Educating the world" should come before "connecting the world".
[+] [-] kodablah|7 years ago|reply
That's a scary thought in several ways. At the very least it's a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Also, it robs large groups of responsible people from beneficial communication tools because of how it's used by others. It often occurs with progress and advancement though, those that have it often only see the negative side of sharing. The positive side rarely gets coverage.
[+] [-] michaelmrose|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rock_hard|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelmrose|7 years ago|reply
Who can look at Zuckerberg and instead of thinking why would I want that guy deciding the course of my nations fate preceed to lament that he doesn't do so slightly differently.
[+] [-] simplecomplex|7 years ago|reply
The likely reason is commercial. Many of those areas now have better internet and phone penetration, so there is less to gain for Facebook.
[+] [-] bronson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pseingatl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jinonoel|7 years ago|reply
Imagine the amount of first world privilege you need to have to be able to say this with a straight face. While we're at it how about we don't spread education and vaccinations across developing countries as well, until we "fully realized the scope of various ways it impacts a society, and often the whole nation".
[+] [-] duxup|7 years ago|reply
I wish we saw similar movements to bring people together that seem as effective.
I think at one point simply being able to communicate would do the good thing, I'm not sure that is the case... :(
[+] [-] adamnemecek|7 years ago|reply
I feel like some sort of super national government is needed. I hate the idea but like there needs to be some sort of counterweight to supernational organizations. Local governments trying to punish them is like a game of what-a-mole.
[+] [-] rgbrenner|7 years ago|reply
Only because you feel like your definition of human rights would win, likely because you're american (as I am).
Are you still for this if it meant China was the enforcer against the US? Are you ready for them to retaliate against us for citizens speaking out about CCP actions? The role and place of government, and even the idea that it is open to criticism, is a western idea. It is not a given that western ideas will continue to prevail (in fact, democracy is on the retreat worldwide).
[+] [-] tsunamifury|7 years ago|reply
Here are a few observations:
1) the smartphone has become a technology vector to the most remote areas in the world, and its natural use case is communication
2) data is expensive, so expensive that many regions can not afford it regularly.
3) connectivity infrastructure is very expensive, and many developing regions customer base do not represent the revenues to support it.
4) Facebook and other services growth depend on reliable data connectivity
5) what started out as a way to launder facebooks ad inventory profits to carriers to provide free data so that Facebook and carrier networks could expand, turned into a cultural invasion
6) now areas who had not experienced the level of connectivity that Facebook affords are using it in radical and sometimes violent ways.
7) those local communities are struggling to regulate it while the broader developed world is shocked at the results
8) it turns out each region wants to regulate this in very different ways and have very different culturally accepted goals about communication as a whole. I.e. censorship hate speech etc.
9) the variety of cultures means that a global standard to filter and control communications is a kind of np complete problem. What is hate speech in one region may be free speech in another.
10) the best positioned and leveraged entities to provide the super-oversight are as of today, private for profit companies. This is likely a distasteful solution to many.
[+] [-] tyfon|7 years ago|reply
I'm not opposed to the idea either. I'd also like it to hold government ministers/officials personally responsible for a states breaches of basic human rights. But the problem lies in it's structure, accountability and execution. It would be very hard to make a stable system that was objective and neither corrupt nor possible to subvert in some way.