Facebook has been in cite by the United Nations as enabling genocide in Myanmar. Myanmar did not have any type of telecommunication network when Facebook persuaded the government to reduce the price of cell phones.
Read the Case Study 13-2, Ethical Decision Making: Situation 3. Then, answer the following questions:
Situation 3
Facebook has been in cite by the United Nations as enabling genocide in Myanmar.
Myanmar did not have any type of telecommunication network when Facebook persuaded the government to reduce the price of cell phones.
In return, Facebook provided a basic Internet infrastructure for the people living in Myanmar.
Military personnel posted fake stories and propaganda that incited the violence against
the Muslim Rohingya minority group.
Reports indicated that 1.3 million people followed the accounts created by hundreds of military personnel who posed as fans of rock stars, models, national heroes, and even a beauty queen.
Also, photos of victims of conflicts from other countries were even falsely in label as a current
conflict caused by the Rohingya to fuel anger among the majority.
The “fake news” Facebook posts were largely believable because many of the 18 million users in Myanmar believe what they read—they are known to confuse Facebook with the Internet itself.
More so, Facebook admitted it was slow to react and to remove those accounts,
as the hate speech campaign stretched over “half a decade.”
The result: in just one year 700,000 Rohingya left the country.
i One report in December 2018 revealed that Facebook employed two full‐time moderators
who spoke Burmese in 2011,
but in late 2018, Facebook employed over 100 and claimed it was getting better at removing fake and hateful content.ii,iii
Lastly, Roger McNamee claimed in an interview on 1A on National Public Radio
that Facebook sees such unfortunate incidents as a cost of doing business in its virtuous goal of connecting the whole world.
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