Facebook 'Lets Vigilantes in Ethiopia Incite Ethnic Killing' (theguardian.com) 54
Facebook is under renewed scrutiny, accused of continuing to allow activists to incite ethnic massacres in Ethiopia's escalating war. From a report: Analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and the Observer found Facebook is still letting users post content inciting violence through hate and misinformation. This is despite being aware it helps directly fuel tensions, prompting claims of inaction and indifference against the social media giant. The investigation tracked down relatives who have linked Facebook posts to the killings of loved ones. One senior member of Ethiopia's media accused the firm of "standing by and watching the country fall apart." The accusations arrive amid intensifying focus on Facebook's content moderation decisions, with it previously being accused of playing a role in the ethnic persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
Not the first, won't be the last (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook is a terrible global genocide accelerator, a sane society would've shut it down after the first genocide it enabled, at the latest.
Re:Not the first, won't be the last (Score:4, Insightful)
For real, who new a decade ago the silly site that replaced MySpace would be involved in multiple genocides at this point. Real bleak stuff.
Part One: Mark Zuckerberg Should Be On Trial For Crimes Against Humanity [stitcher.com]
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There were genocides long before there was social media.
The Serbs and Hutus were able to organize their massacres without Facebook.
If anything, Facebook and other social media help to restrain genocides by exposing them to the world. The Rohingyas fared much better than the Tutsis, and the world is paying more attention to Tigray than we did to Srebrenica.
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There may be truth to that. But that doesn't let Facebook off the hook, any more than it does manufacturers of machetes and AK-47s. They may not be singularly responsible, but neither can they escape the fact that they largely turn a blind eye (and make a profit) while people use their products while committing attrocities.
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Better add Toyota trucks to helping terrorist. Do they brush their teams? Better add Crest. The tool creator should not be held liable for what someone does with their product.
Timothy McVeigh used a pickup truck full of fertilizer to blow up the Federal building. Based on your logic, we should sue the auto manufacturer and the fertilizer company for the actions of McVeigh. Yeah, that makes sense. Sure. /s
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By the time people get in their truck they've already decided to do the genocide. What's more there's nothing Toyota can do to change that. If it were easy for Toyota to detect a genocide and kill the ignition, and they chose not to, sure they'd be responsible.
I think what's going on here though isn't that Facebook wants to be associated with genocide; they probably don't have the linguistic resources to detect it. There are fewer than ten million Tigrayan speakers in the world.
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Buying nitrate fertilizer did get more difficult after that.
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Better add Toyota trucks to helping terrorist. Do they brush their teams? Better add Crest. The tool creator should not be held liable for what someone does with their product.
There's something to be said about being a propaganda megaphone though. Although he and his wife cowardly murdered his own children and themselves while the Soviet army was knocking on the door Goebbels would surely have been put on trial at Nuremberg. The Krupp family? Not so much.
Re: Not the first, won't be the last (Score:1)
Are machete and AK-47 manufacturers on the hook for any African genocide? That's news.
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It's been known for years that Facebook doesn't have enough staff speaking non-English languages to provide even the pathetic level of moderation that English pages get.
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I'm guessing that if any powers that be wouldn't want these things to happen, they would have stopped them.
Re: Not the first, won't be the last (Score:2)
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So again, who is allowed to call for genocide?
Uh, nobody? This isn't even a facts vs. disinformation issue where you can try to portray the clearly wrong party as just being on "a side" of the issue, it's a whole type of message that should be disallowed.
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Speaking of printing press, in Soviet Russia it was a tightly controlled resource. I guess that in Putin's Russia it's not much different.
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If Facebook facilitates and amplifies the messaging of the people originating the speech that leads to genocide, they're partially responsible for genocide themselves.
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If Facebook facilitates and amplifies the messaging of the people originating the speech that leads to genocide, they're partially responsible for genocide themselves.
No that's not how this works they would still be committing criminal acts without Facebook. In most cases such genocide is almost always driven by government forces that then look the other way and act like they don't get what's happening. Governments want to blame Facebook a foreign third party simply because the government either supports the genocide and let's it happen or the government has lost control and wants to maintain the appearance that they still run the country.
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Governing is very difficult (Score:3)
Did anyone think it would only be good to have people publicize and share what they want? There's a reason why speech has been restricted in large parts of the world for a long time. It's really hard to achieve stability. I'm very pro free speech, but it's hard not to see we're the exceptions not the rule in history.
I'm Canadian and we've seen Trudeau use pretty authoritarian measures to deal with the Truckers Freedom Convoy. What's almost laughable is when India had it's farmer's protest with similar blockades, Trudeau was right there cheering on the farmers, saying they have right to protest...
Of course when it happens in his own home, he turns out more authoritarian than India's Modi.
Certain places in the world have deadly consequences for things. It doesn't matter if things are true or untrue. It might be true that this or that group did something. But if it stokes people and can lead them to further violent action. It's not something we generally have to deal with in Canada, but it is a reality in large parts of the world.
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There's a reason why speech has been restricted in large parts of the world for a long time. It's really hard to achieve stability.
Can you elaborate what kind of stability you have in mind? Stability of oppressive regimes?
Re: Governing is very difficult (Score:2)
Whichever government OP agrees with obviously. People calling for censorship never want to be censored themselves.
Re: Governing is very difficult (Score:1)
Quite often you have a choice between an existing oppressive regime and a bloodbath of the regime change. With revolution not necessarily bringing in a less oppressive regime or successful at all.
The option of changing the regime from warlord dictatorship to Scandinavian-style democracy... isn't usually an option.
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The option of changing the regime from warlord dictatorship to Scandinavian-style democracy... isn't usually an option.
Can you also say that the reverse, Scandinavian-style democracy to warlord dictatorship, is also unlikely? I think that complacency in the face of Canadian-like slide to illiberal democracy is a trajectory that could lead to warlord dictatorship. It happened in Weimar Germany, it happened in Putin's Russia.
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Actually yes.
I fully acknowledge those regimes are oppressive. But they're politically preferable to many war like alternatives. When your daily safety is threatened, sometime free speech takes a back seat.
If you look at places like Singapore which uses pretty strong controls on speech and everything to manage a diverse population. They even have quotas on how many from this or that group can live in a neighborhood to prevent ethnic domination. These are all very authoritatian measures.
But what is the alter
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Inflammatory rhetoric from PM, invocation of Emergency Measures Act, extra-judicial confiscation of bank accounts, and police crackdown on peaceful protesters and independent
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From the same story you linked to:
"Any demonstration or expression of views and opinions that may be interpreted as condoning illegal activity is in direct opposition to the OPP's values and mandate."
In Canada, protest are fine. We are cool with protests.
We are NOT cool with lots of illegal activity, and we definitely are not cool with police officers condoning and funding it.
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I agree im a minority born in South Africa who lived under apartheid.
I know what's happening in Canada is pretty bad.
To contrast it. India let farmers blockade roads for months on end.
https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
Trudeau called the emergency act after a few weeks. I know it's bad. The ultimate irony of course is Trudeau praised the farmer's protest.
We're a bit side tracked here. I was commenting on regions in conflict like Ethiopia or what not where tensions can be stoked easily.
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Your FoxSpin is showing. Put something over that, hurts the eyes.
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So Don's out of the room?
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Canada is not some third-world hell were we let a city be held hostage by trucks blocking roads illegally for months. We have no wish to be like that. Especially when it's a tiny, insignificant number of people blocking the roads and honking their airhorns, all in the middle of the capital city. Fuck that. We overwhelmingly do not care to be held hostage by a few law-breaking morons. This is like training your toddler not to hit other children when they disagree with them. You'd rather no one did that, I gu
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Charter rights were fully respected. No one has a "charter right" to block traffic illegally, or violate city noise ordinances illegally. No one has a charter right to incite violence or illegal activity. No one was arrested for anything that charter rights protect.
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As a Canadian, let me point out how wrong you are.
"Peaceful protest" is fine, but it must be a LAWFUL protest: i.e. just like non-protesters, you can't be breaking the law. If the misguided-and-incredibly-stupid protest had have been lawful, if they had of OBEYED THE FUCKING LAWS, then it would still be ongoing. Because in Canada, you can do that, and many long-term protests have occurred over the years and been allowed.
The freedumb convey protesters were constantly breaking laws, parking illegally and viol
Can't you tell.... (Score:2)
Champion and Pyle are also doing this (Score:2)
Champion [dickssportinggoods.com] and Pyle [amazon.com] are doing the same thing. Both companies have no controls in place to block people from amplifying messages of hatred or genocide. I don't think AT&T or Verizon or Ethio Telecom block phone calls that call for violence either.
For that matter, does Slashdot block such things? Certainly it would get moderated down, but if someone called for genocide here, I don't think the site owners have a policy of blocking content, do they? I think the filters here are based more on lameness filt
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You are being silly. The internet equivalent of the Megaphone is a QWERTY keyboard and keyboards or megaphones are just not the proper physical layer for censorship. The physical equivalent of a Social network amplification is a Reader's Club where you make a speech and people can get a copy of your book; if regular attendees liked your speech they get a copy of your book and amplify your message; if the Club staff did not like what you said or wrote, you do not get invited again.
I don't think AT&T or Verizon or Ethio Telecom block phone calls that call for violence either.
There are major differences
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First they came...
Quit being so hard on facebook (Score:2)
They are just trying to make money, all of this moderation nonsense just gets in the way and hurts their 'network'.
Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First (Score:1)
Let the truth be told! (Score:2)
It's people who kill (Score:2)
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You're right but there is no point in blaming ethnic murders on mental issues; it's already clear most murderers have mental issues, but what we need is to avoid murders, specially mass murders. The worst genocide in Africa, the 1994 Rwandan Genocide was daily enabled by hate messages on the station "Radio Mille Collines", that kept a nationwide killing spree of a million victims going for 3 months. This must serve as a lesson that indeed people have mental issues and may be pushed to mass killing over simp
Zuck will be remembered (Score:2)
a long list (Score:2)
Don't they do that everywhere? (Score:2)
Just sayin'.
meanwhile in Bongland (Score:2)