LONDON - In a new report, Amnesty claims that Facebook’s algorithms “proactively amplified” anti-Rohingya content. It also alleges that Meta ignored civilians’ and activists’ pleas to curb hate-mongering on the social media platform while profiting from increased engagement.
Facebook’s seeming inability to manage online hate speech and disinformation has become a major offline problem for many countries across the globe. Amnesty is calling for the tech giant to provide reparations to affected communities. The Rohingya have been persecuted by Myanmar’s Buddhist majority for decades, but Facebook has exacerbated the situation, Amnesty says.
The human rights group claims that the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s armed forces, used Facebook to boost propaganda against the Rohingya and to amass public support for a military campaign of rampant killings, rape and arson targeting the predominantly Muslim minority in August 2017.
Amnesty analyzed internal Meta documents released by whistleblower Frances Haugen in 2021, as well as various public reports, and it conducted interviews with Rohingya activists and former Meta staff.
It concludes that Facebook’s parent company—then known as Facebook Inc.—was made aware of its role in contributing to the atrocities against the Rohingya ethnic group years before 2017, and it both failed to heed such warnings at the time and took “wholly inadequate” measures to address them after the fact.
Meta owes Rohingya reparations for Myanmar violence, says Amnesty
A prominent human rights group says Facebook’s owner Meta owes the Rohingya reparations for the platform’s role in fuelling violence against the mostly Muslim minority in Myanmar.
Amnesty International issued the call for compensation on Thursday after accusing Meta of failing to act despite activists repeatedly warning the company about the implications of anti-Rohingya hate speech on its Facebook platform.
The group said Myanmar activists had raised concerns about the issue with Meta as early as 2012, some five years before the country’s military launched a campaign of mass killings and rape that forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to seek refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh.
The brutal crackdown is now the subject of a genocide investigation at the International Court of Justice, while in March this year, the United States officially declared the military’s actions a genocide.
“In the months and years leading up to the atrocities, Facebook’s algorithms were intensifying a storm of hatred against the Rohingya which contributed to real-world violence,” said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.
