10 - What Should We Expect of Intermediaries?

Summary

Facebook has come under sustained criticism from human rights groups for its role in helping to spread hate speech that fueled the crisis. The platform’s policies prohibit incitement to violence and hate speech, as well as hate organizations and content that expresses support or praise for those groups or their members. These policies, however, were not well enforced during the crisis.⁸ The Burma Human Rights Network reported that official government Facebook pages used dehumanizing language in a campaign to “demonize” the Rohingya population, and “Facebook posts by nationalists have directed abuse towards journalists, NGO workers and Rohingya activists.”⁹ The military in Myanmar executed an extensive, systematic campaign involving hundreds of military personnel who used fake Facebook accounts to spread anti-Rohingya propaganda, flooding news and celebrity pages with incendiary comments and disinformation.¹⁰