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Facebook Has Turned Into a Beast in Myanmar, UN Says (bbc.com)
UN investigators have accused Facebook of playing a "determining role" in stirring up hatred against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. From a report: One of the team probing possible acts of genocide said Facebook had "turned into a beast." About 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Myanmar's military launched an operation in August against "insurgents" in Rakhine state. Facebook has said there is "no place for hate speech" on its platform. "We take this incredibly seriously and have worked with experts in Myanmar for several years to develop safety resources and counter-speech campaigns," a Facebook spokeswoman told the BBC.
The UN's Fact-finding Mission on Myanmar announced the interim findings of its investigation on Monday. During a press conference the chairman of the mission, Marzuki Darusman, said that social media had "substantively contributed to the level of acrimony" amongst the wider public, against Rohingya Muslims. "Hate speech is certainly, of course, a part of that," he added.
The UN's Fact-finding Mission on Myanmar announced the interim findings of its investigation on Monday. During a press conference the chairman of the mission, Marzuki Darusman, said that social media had "substantively contributed to the level of acrimony" amongst the wider public, against Rohingya Muslims. "Hate speech is certainly, of course, a part of that," he added.
FB released an existing beast. It does show how social media and the internet amplifies problems. But you have to blame the population and government for these tragedies.
Make a conscious decision and do not use social media platforms. You do not need them, they are not useful, and they make existing problems worse.
Looks like a space has opened up for a social platform offering Unlimited Free Speech.
damaged by dogma
People's hatred for each other knows no bounds. Its not the platforms fault, but it is the platform that will suffer. Those wanting scape goats and quick technological fixes to hard social issues, will blame the platform for not "protecting" people from bigotry and intolerance and demand that the platform censor everything they object to. When the platform can't deliver their desired censorship perfectly, the those same people will demand its closure or banning. Dammed be the consequences.
If there is anything that will kill free speech or a democracy, it's peoples inability to reconcile their differences.
Now that the umpteenth country and the UN itself has basically descibed Facebook as a hate speech hub, it just has to go.
I hope Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl 'ban bossy' Sandberg do well with their next offering.
When a majority of the people agree it is socially acceptable to hatemonger upon a targeted minority, the rule of law is rendered mute by the cacophony of voices willing to suspend decency for the brief ecstasy of a social like or two or thirty.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
And it's the same everywhere.
It helped Russians violate US election law. It helps landlords illegally advertise based on race, religion, age, and gender.
How many laws does it have to break before we admit it is a criminal enterprise?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Facebook is a super-powerful gossip machine. What's going on with Facebook went on before computers existed, it just took longer for info to be spread.
People are nasty creatures. This is not new and is extremely unlikely to change for the better.
I detest Facebook ( and I refuse to use it ) but Facebook is not the problem. The problem is people. We used to have big wars which sort of took care of that shit for a while, but now we cannot do that due to the existence of nukes, so now what we have is a world which is in a constant state of turmoil with nasty business going on all over the world. It's not going to get better, so unless you want to be miserable you may as well learn to accept there are things which are beyond your power to change and get on with making your own life as good as you can make it.
... and it's not other social media.
It's people who take that sit seriously.
You'd think that, by now, people would know that social media is a game room.
It was intended for entertainment purposes only.
It's not Facebook.
It's us.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
... the only way to win is not to play.
Ignore the baiting and keep scrolling until you get to the cat video.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Over 100 years ago, newspapers would have been blamed for fanning the flames of one war or another. US newspapers have no doubt carried headlines that incited lynchings, native massacres, and even wars. It's just the same thing "on the internet".
Islam has been a genocidial cult for the last 1400 years: how is that Facebook's fault?
What's terribly insidious about Facebook as a platform is not the speech it allows, but the speech it promotes.
Here on /., you have numerous ways about how to order the comments on the site, which ones to show/not show, etc. Facebook does not. Instead, it orders your feed based on what it thinks you will interact with -- this happens to be things which we strongly disagree with. Instead of a society where reasonable people have discussions about solutions to problems, Facebook has created a platform where it literally promotes posts that troll to increase "user engagement" -- and thus their ad revenue. Online discussions have literally become worse since Facebook has existed -- and you see it here too.
In Soviet Valley, Facebook uses you.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
The Rohingyan Muslims have for years been a constant thorn in the side of Burmese people and government. The Rohingyans have been attacking and killing the Buddhists in the region for well over a century now.
This so-called "Genocide" is the response to constant acts of violent Jihad against otherwise peaceful Buddhists that have been going on for years. Shame that the media has been ignoring the plight of these peaceful Buddhists finally snapping and defending themselves against this onslaught of Arabic barbarism.
Make no mistake, the Rohingyans brought it upon themselves for their inability to peacefully live alongside Buddhists.
I guess "Algorithmic Censorship and Agenda Pushing" wasn't snappy enough.
You let one large company control most of the mainstream media people read GLOBALLY, some fucked up shit is going to go down. Imagine how bad it would be if Facebook would have been allowed by the Indian government to offer 'their brand of internet' to the poor masses.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
There is nothing peaceful about the Burmese Buddhists that that are murdering and raping *thousands* of Rohingyans. The evidence is overwhelming that the Rohingya are the victims. And their plight is severe.
It is Genocide, and due to apathy by Australia and others likely to be successful.
I do not know how you can live with yourself promoting such lies. I suppose you think that the Jews also brought the Holocaust upon themselves. And that Pol Pot was a kind man misunderstood by western media.
I have seen a lot of nonsense on Slashdot. But this is the first time I have seen something really evil.
Wasn't Facebook originally intended to let Harvard undergrads find out who is currently dating and someone who's not available?
The British must bear the responsibility on the racial / religious conflict
It was the British who promised the Rohingya migrants a muslim state inside the Buddhist Burma (the Brits had/have no right to do that, but they did) and gave weapons to the Rohingya which they used to slaughter the Buddhists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arakan_massacres_in_1942
During World War II in Burma (present-day Myanmar), Rohingya Muslims (allied with the British and promised a Muslim state in return) fought against local Rakhine Buddhists, who were allied with the Japanese
That “real place” dates back to the aftermath of World War II, when the forebears of the Rohingya appealed to Pakistan, which at the time included what is now Bangladesh, to annex their territory
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/09/the-rohingya-of-myanmar-pawns-in-an-anglo-chinese-proxy-war-fought-by-saudi-jihadists.html
While the ethnic conflict in Rankine state is very old, it has over the last years morphed into an Jihadist guerilla war financed and led from Saudi Arabia. The area is of geo-strategic interest:
Rakhine plays an important part in [the Chinese One Belt One Road Initiative] OBOR, as it is an exit to Indian Ocean and the location of planned billion-dollar Chinese projects—a planned economic zone on Ramree Island, and the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port, which has oil and natural gas pipelines linked with Yunnan Province’s Kunming
It is in "Western interest" to hinder China's projects in Myanmar. Inciting Jihad in Rakhine could help to achieve that. There is historic precedence for such a Rohingya - Bamar proxy war in Burma. During World War II British imperial forces incited the Rohingya Muslim in Rakhine to fight the Bamar, the dominant Burmese nationalist Buddhists allied with Japanese imperialists.
I'm frankly tired of this shit. As someone that lives in the area Buddhists here are total scumbags. I donated some money to a charity that was specifically about helping the kids caught in this, first question my Buddhist girlfriend says immediately is "why are you giving money to muslims!?".
Buddhists love blaming the west for all their problems, i'm so tired of it.
Why must the British bear the responsibility and not the Japanese? Because their proxy side lost? Why not Saudi Arabia? Because they were the latest and not the first? Why not the people themselves? Are they so subhuman that they can take no responsibility for their actions? So gullible that they cannot be held accountable, and act as puppets for whichever white man is in the room?
and not the people committing genocide.
Sagredo: You are taking it SERIOUSLY?
Simplicio: Yes, definitely.
Sagredo: That's UNCREDIBLE!
If the Rohingya hadn't come to Myanmar and started demanding privileges, killing and raping it would not have happened. We can see that they are up to the same tricks in Sri Lanka too. We should not criticise, in a generation's time or sooner we will have to do the same in the West or become sharia hell holes.
Or, you know, the "targeted minority" is a bunch of violent cultists who literally kill themselves and their children to kill you...
700,000 people show up unannounced in your country and Facebook is the problem? The 700,000 people are the problem! It doesn't help that a lot of their cultural practices are EXTREMELY disapproved of by the rest of the world.
Dude breaks into your place and tries to claim it as his own. Now, the politically correct reasoning: "But why is his claim to the house any weaker than yours? Just because they were the latest and not the first?"
Well, duh, yes. The local, long-established population has the priority. That's common sense.
The problems reported are in the country they came from, not where they fled to. In other words, the Facebook problem is what forced them to cross the border.
And how it created so much strife by facilitating communication.
Shush. We are to believe the Rohingya are peaceful Muslims and that the evil violent Buddhists are driving them out of their ancestral lands. Ignore the violent insurgency, that most of the Rohingya are first or second generation imigrees and that the Burmese people have been conquered four the last 300 years and are now determined to stay free.
Sounds like the rule-of-law has been enforced ... against camel-fucking Muzzi-wog culture sluts. The majority define virtue , not some external Trotsky OxBridge gaffots. Goooooo great gawd BUD cause a dead Muzzi is a good Muzzi.
Stop relating religion to nation!!! We know that isliam is political doctrine but it still isn't nation!!!! This people are expelled because they are Rohingya not because of their religion!!!
As political doctrine isliam proclaim that all Muslim are "one nation" this is the first place why other religions can't live together with muslims!!!
A citation, really? Do you habitually stick your head in the sand?
A specific example of attempted genocide by Islamic invaders. ...with the Muslim camps being described as building "towers of skulls of the infidels" on hillocks.
Here's another reference for your citation list.
another one.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
(I reserve the right to amend that in the future if a previous genocide gets blamed on Facebook).
First, who is saying to ban free speech? Knock it off with that stupid strawman.
It's all about attention. Zeynep Tufekci writes and speaks very well about this.
There's a difference between allowing hate speech on the internet, and promoting it as the top item in your newsfeeds. The first is not the issue--it's the second. Combine that with many poor people around the world cannot access the internet, but only Facebook, then Facebook IS the internet for them, and what Facebook shows them is the problem. And people who've not used the internet before don't know to be suspicious of everything. And Facebook wants to show you stuff to outrage you, to make you read more ads. And what outrages more than "news" saying Muslims are murdering your neighbors. If that inspires Buddhists to actually murder thousands of people in revenge for things that never happened, well, that's just collateral damage. We gotta sell ads, and free speech, we're not to blame, we try to take down fake news after any massacres, etc.
Facebook is just insanely good at spreading evil. It may have other uses. I think the evil on Facebook exceeds the good, especially since there are other ways to get the good parts, and the evil is getting better as using Facebook.
The "peaceful" Burmese were doing it on the other side of the country to tribal Christians and animists back in the 1990s and early 2000s. You could find satellite photos of the before/after for destroyed villages.
Sure, some of those tribes were armed, but who the hell wouldn't be when the army is after you? The Burmese actually dipped into Thailand to keep up the fuckery in refugee camps. Bangladesh is increasingly concerned about the same sort of thing.
The GP's post is shit, and he should feel bad.