Within Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia Facebook is used more like Google as they live within a country with a relatively oppressive government. Unfortunately from this there has been a ton of hate speech on behalf of the Rohinga people as users on Facebook said harmful things about these people which is turn seen as factual information. This is turn has caused an international crisis as Rohingya people are being persecuted and fleeing the country. Currently there has been ” Some 700,000 members of the Rohingya community had recently fled the country amid a military crackdown and ethnic violence.” (Reuters). The Rohingya people are being called such things as “dogs, maggots and rapists, suggest they be fed to pigs, and urge they be shot or exterminated. The material also includes crudely pornographic anti-Muslim images.” (Reuters) What is even more ridiculous is that Facebook is having a hard time in getting rid of hate speech being said as they have no hired staff that understands the native language and has hired outside help from a professional services firm called “Project Honey Badger” that has “60 people reviewing reports of hate speech and other content posted by Myanmar’s 18 million active Facebook users.” (Reuters). So currently Facebook’s lack of ability to act on this situation is now causing there to be an international incident in which many people are being killed and displaced from their native homes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjPYmEZxACM
Trends- This situation is most likely not going to be solved until Facebook is able to get Hate Speech off in Myanmar, as it is so prevalent within the country, and especially towards the Rohinga people that they wouldn’t be able to be solved anytime soon. What is difficult for Facebook to do is that people in Myanmar use Facebook as they would a search engine like Google, but Facebook is objective and does not have factual information at all times. What is so difficult about this is that they will have to completely change the people in this countries attitude on Facebook and make the people understand that Facebook is not supposed to be used to find factual information. This is so disruptive due to the fact that Facebook is being used as a search engine rather than a social media site. This may cause there to be a shift in the way people use facebook.
Impact- This has a huge impact within this country as people are being displaced through attacks from the hate speech that is being put out on Facebook. This is also scary due in part that Facebook is being used as a source in which to find factual information which is very scary especially if other countries do this as this could fuel hate speech and could alter facebook users perceptions on certain topics.
Predictions- What will most likely happen to this incident is that Facebook will most likely invest money into getting translators to get rid of hate speech that is occurring in Myanmar. But this is just an underlying issue, Facebook now must make sure its users understand the differences between search engines and social media because as seen with the Rohingya people there are major consequences if they do not.
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