A new human rights report accuses Facebook of aiding the 2017 genocide against Muslims in Myanmar, while other reports allege the company continues to allow its platform to spread dangerous disinformation and hate speech in other countries.
In the months and years leading up to what the U.S. has called a genocide by Myanmar’s military against Rohingya Muslims — that saw 9,000 killed and hundreds of thousands forced from the country — Facebook “became an echo chamber of virulent anti-Rohingya content,” Amnesty International alleged in a report last week.
“Actors linked to the Myanmar military and radical Buddhist nationalist groups systematically flooded the Facebook platform with incitement targeting the Rohingya, sowing disinformation regarding an impending Muslim takeover of the country and seeking to portray the Rohingya as sub-human invaders,” the report said, attacking the social media firm’s “wholly inadequate staffing of its Myanmar operations prior to 2017.”
