Greg's Corner

Is Facebook a flashpoint for violence in yet another country?

For those of us who use Facebook, we all have that friend or relative who is so entrenched in their beliefs they can’t be talked out of making discriminatory posts against some ethnicity, religion, or other groups that they may find objectionable. Now imagine that person made a Facebook post inciting violence against a particular group based on misleading information. Here in the U.S. we have laws against threatening speech and our culture is mostly one that doesn’t form into anti-whatever death squads. Other countries in the world do not have such luxuries. Previously, we’ve posted about the violence and disenfranchisement of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. More recently, The New York Times has published an article detailing a similar situation currently happening in Sri Lanka.

In an article entitled “Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match” the Times details the role Facebook plays in the violence perpetrated by some of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority in Facebook against Muslim minorities, and just like in Myanmar, Facebook is seen as the de facto internet in the country where any rumor or conspiracy theory about the Sri Lankan Muslims are seen as fact. The violence reached such a peak that the Sri Lankan government even blocked Facebook from the country for a time but millions of Sri Lankans would get around the ban using virtual private networks known as VPNs. When other Sri Lankans would try to flag hateful posts on Facebook, the social media giant would once again respond to the complaints by saying the posts didn’t violate their seemingly arbitrary community guidelines. As one government official put it “The germs are ours, but Facebook is the wind, you know?”

With Facebook holding virtual information monopolies in so many countries they need to do more than just offering platitudes to the press and government officials. If Facebook wants to be a real agent of change in this world it needs to concentrate on how its platform is abused rather than just expanding. In too many cases when Facebook expands into a country, it is akin to dropping a formidable weapon in the middle of a country and letting any majority wield it as they see fit.