Facebook tolerates the spread of ethnic hatred in Ethiopia and Myanmar. The US Senate investigates.
Following the revelations of a former senior executive, the US Senate has opened an investigation on Facebook. Mark Zukerberg’s social platform is swarming with post inciting ethnic hatred and genocide published by the Burmese and Ethiopian dictatorships. The former senior executive reveals that the monitoring and suppression of these post is very lacking. Facebook desperately denies it, trying to discredit its former executive.
The US Senate has opened an investigation against the famous social media multinational: Facebook following the shocking revelations of a former employee who underline an inexplicable “tolerance” of the Facebook administration towards the messages of ethnic hatred and fake news spread by the regimes of Myanmar and Ethiopia. This was revealed by Fances Haugen, former Facebook Product Manger, subjected to a hearing at the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Haugen’s testimony will open an investigation entrusted to the Senate subcommittee on consumer protection.
Haugen details how Facebook tolerates being used by dictatorial regimes to spread and justify violence against opponents or entire ethnic groups. Haugen explains that Facebook’s tolerance of extremist messages, ethnic hatred and related fake news opens a dangerous media door that if not closed would have devastating effects on a part of the population of Myanmar and Ethiopia and could be emulated by other dictatorships scattered around the planet.
Haugen defines the media campaigns carried out by these two dictatorial regimes on Facebook as a “terrorist propaganda” that Facebook is not very aware of. Haugen is a highly qualified witness having held his last role at Facebook as the multinational’s counterintelligence director.
The subversive content disseminated by the two regimes and their proxies and supporters, even through fake Facebook accounts, are amplified at a global level by the “Like” algorithms, by the sharing and comments that generate further visibility to the incitements to violence in Myanmar where the military even kidnaps the children to blackmail opponents or in Ethiopia, torn by deep regional and ethnic divisions, devastated by the civil war in Tigray, Afar, Amhara and Oromia and with a genocide taking place in Tigray. It is precisely the algorithms used by Facebook that amplify these media campaigns.
Haugen identifies two critical issues that explain Facebook’s flaws in the control and censorship of genocidal messages and ethnic hatred. The first concerns the shortcomings of the software for translating languages written with alphabets other than Latin, such as the Burmese language and Amaric.
The second criticality lies in the failure to implement the systems of integrity and security that should prevent the spread of ethnic violence online. “There is a structural shortage of Facebook staff for message monitoring, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism operations. This permit the spreaders of such media campaigns who, thanks to the shortcomings of Facebook, are able to ensure a free and effective proliferation of threats directed against part of their population or against the opposition. “ Haugen states.
The former employee also provides important information on the use of Facebook by the Chinese government to monitor the Uyghur population (Chinese Muslim minority) and the Iranian government to intercept opponents among the diaspora. However, it should be emphasized that these last two aspects cannot be directly attributed to Facebook. Since the social platform is open and therefore visible to anyone, authoritarian governments cannot be prevented from consulting profiles to identify opponents, journalists and human rights activists opposed to government policies.
One solution might be to limit profile views. Unfortunately, Haugen informs, this solution is impractical as Facebook relies precisely on the visibility of its users’ profiles to increase the traffic of use of the social platform and therefore the turnover from the sale of the data of individual users of the social network, a service offered free of charge in order to transform the profiles in goods to sell.
Facebook management reacted by trying to discredit Haugen. “Haugen’s testimony in the Senate is of limited value. Haugen has worked for our company for less than two years. He did not have direct relationships, never participated in decision-making meetings with executive level executives and did not work directly on the subject in question. We disagree on so many issues he testified to. Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to start creating standard rules for the Internet”, says Facebook spokesman Andy Stone. It is difficult to understand how a director of counterintelligence did not participate in decision-making meetings and did not have direct relations with the management …
Last August, Mike Dvilyansky, head of Facebook’s cyber espionage investigation, told CNN that the company disabled only 200 accounts that spread hate or ethnic and genocidal policies promoted by authoritarian regimes, informing that these accounts represent only the tip of the iceberg. In 2018, Facebook admitted that it had not done enough to prevent the spread of posts that foment ethnic hatred or genocide, promising to limit the spread of the “disinformation” of these nefarious ideologies.
In 2019 Facebook claimed to have removed more than 7 million hate speech profiles, seeing a 59% increase in cases compared to 2018. Facebook reported that 80% of ethnic hate or incitement to violence posts are not detected. by humans but automatically by artificial intelligence. This information was aimed at demonstrating Facebook’s commitment and the use of infallible systems in the fight against ethnic hatred.
Unfortunately, after 3 years there has not been an increase in the monitoring of these messages and their suppression. Ethnic hatred, incitements for ethnic cleansing and genocide continue to proliferate on Facebook without major problems. The 7 million of hate speech profiles removed on 2019 seem a pure commercial propaganda if we compare with the August 2021 declaration to CNN of Facebook high manager Mike Dvilyansky tha only 200 hate speech account has been removed.
Hate speech profiles proliferation do not only concern Myanmar and Ethiopia but many other countries. For example, in Italy, many Facebook profiles with a clear extreme right address, incitement to hatred and racism are active and undisturbed. In Africa the situation is worse. Congolese extremists spread ethnic hatred against the Tutsi minority and against Rwanda.
The same goes for the Rwandan terrorist group FDLR (Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda) responsible for the 1994 genocide. The Burundian military regime between 2015 and 2019 also made extensive use of Facebook to spread ethnic hatred against the Tutsi minority and the spread of an avalanche of fakenews. Media activities that the communication experts of the Burundian military junta still continue to promote on Facebook, including through a multitude of fake accounts.
In Cameroon, many Facebook profiles praise hatred towards the Anglophone minority with which the dictatorial regime of President Paul Biya promoted a terrifying civil war three years ago hidden by the international media. Even on the front of Islamic terrorism in Africa, the Facebook social platform is widely used. On the subject there is a cunning of the propaganda offices of Al-Qaeda, DAESH, Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and other Islamic groups. The (often fake) profiles publish “moderate” hate messages associated with fake news and anti-Western propaganda. Videos of the executions of the victims, propaganda videos for recruitment or “heavy” content on the holy war against the infidels are not published. Yet many “moderate” post end with a link that takes you back to the pages of these terrorists who are often positioned on the Dark Web.
Facebook’s scrutiny of ethnic hatred and genocide-fostering posts published by the Ethiopian government or its extremist supporters is still lacking despite the fact that the US Embassy in Asmara, Eritrea, after a cyber intelligence operation, demonstrated that a large number of Ethiopian Facebook profiles praising the violence against Oromo and Tegaru are actually fake accounts opened by propaganda officers of the dictator Isaias Afwerki who would also coordinate much of the war propaganda and fakenews published on Facebook by the Ethiopian regime and nationalist leaders Amhara.
Facebook’s lack of control and suppression of these messages is even more incomprehensible in light of the account closures of Presidents Donald Trump and Nicolás Maduro Moros. For the occasion, Mark Zukerberg had justified the decision to suspend the accounts of the two presidents by saying that they used Facebook to justify their nefarious policies for their respective nations. “The risk of allowing these two Presidents to continue using our service is simply too great right now,” Zukerberg said last March.
Regardless of the observations that may possibly be made on the figures of Trump and Maduro, the decision to limit or suppress their profiles opens a dangerous window on the right of a private firm to decide which topics can be treated on its social platform. The actions taken against the two Presidents, in addition to representing a threat to democracy from the private sector, are illogical in the face of the questionable tolerance shown by Mark Zukerberg towards far worse messages transmitted by governments whose dictatorial nature and crimes against humanity are one sad, obvious and irrefutable reality.
Mark Zukerberg should be more sensitive to the problem, remembering that the messages of ethnic hatred and fakenews led to the deaths of 6 million Jews murdered by Nazi madness in the 1940s. Zukerberg rightly defends his Jewish origins. In December 2015, he said: “As a Jew, my parents taught me that we must rebel against attacks on all communities. Even if an attack is aimed only at you, over time it will be aimed at the freedom of all. “ It seems the time has come for Zukerberg to put into practice the just fight against ethnic hatred to prevent Burmese and Ethiopian citizens from suffering the same fate as Jews.
