A Look at Facebook's Presence in Myanmar Where Despite Public Outcries, Facebook is Still Struggling To Contain Hate Speech (reuters.com)

More than 1,000 anti-Rohingya posts featuring calls for their murder among other hate speech were live on Facebook last week, Reuters reported Wednesday. A probe by the news agency indicates that the network is still being used to encourage violence against the Muslim group in Myanmar despite the tech firm promising to tackle the issue. Reuters reports some of the material had been online for six years. Facebook's rules prohibit "violent or dehumanizing" attacks on ethnic groups. However, the US-based firm mostly relies on users to flag related offending posts rather than hunting them out itself, in part because its software has not had enough training to reliably interpret Burmese text.

Vice reports that Facebook has hired an outside company to look into its role in spreading hate speech and enabling ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

Comments

Re:If Reuters can find it, why can't Facebook?

[Nidi62]

If Reuters can find it, why can't Facebook?

The number of Burmese-speaking Reuters employees (that the Myanmar government hasn't arrested yet) is greater than the number of Burmese-speaking Facebook employees? Hence why Facebook is hiring an outside firm.

Re:Funny how we never get Slashdot stories...

[harrkev]

Probably because Muslims are more often the victim than the perpetrator. There's a lot of countries in Africa too where xians are performing ethnic cleansing on Muslim populations.

You might want to research. The west practices tolerance, but in areas that are majority Muslim, not so much.

Here, you can find a list of countries that allow the DEATH PENALTY for apostasy and blasphemy. You will never guess the dominant religion for most of them... http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Well, "blasphemy" laws can be applied to pretty much anybody that you disagree with. In Pakistan, a Christian woman was pretty much railroaded and sentenced to death, despite the lack of any actual evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

One telling quote (from the article):

In December 2010, a month after Noreen's conviction, a Muslim cleric announced a 500,000 Pakistani rupee award (the equivalent of $10,000)[7] to anyone who would kill her. One survey reported that around 10 million Pakistanis had said that they would be willing to personally kill her out of either religious conviction or for the reward.

Also, even if you DON'T actually commit blasphemy, here is a list of 13 countries where begin an Atheist can get you killed. You get three guesses about the dominant religion for 12 of these countries (the 13th country, Nigeria, is evenly divided between Christian and Islam). Yes, being the wrong religion (or lack thereof) is LEGAL grounds for execution. https://www.theatlantic.com/in...

Another page with a similar map: https://www.indy100.com/articl...

But as to who is the VICTIM of persecution, I will leave this article (cliff notes: Christians). The source data appears to be Pew (who is generally regarded as unbiased), but you can analyze the data for skew yourself.

https://www.express.co.uk/news...

What bugs me the most . . .

[sgt_doom]

Not that I am unsympathetic to the slaughter of muslims in Myanmar and the destruction of their homes their, but there has been a lengthy genocide against the (mostly Christian) Kachin people in that country, and there is little reporting about it, most definitely NOT in Amerika.

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...