JakartaPost/AFP-Sept 30
Facebook should pay reparations to the hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas forced from their homes in Myanmar in a campaign exacerbated by rampant online hate speech, Amnesty International said in a report on Thursday. The Rohingyas, a mainly Muslim minority, were targeted by Myanmar’s military rulers in 2017 and driven into neighboring Bangladesh, where they have since lived in sprawling refugee camps. Victims’ associations and rights advocates say the violence was ramped up by Facebook’s algorithms, saying they play up extremist content that encourages harmful disinformation and hate speech. “Many Rohingya tried to report anti-Rohingya content via Facebook’s ‘report’ function” but to no avail, “allowing these hateful narratives to proliferate and reach unprecedented audiences in Myanmar,” Amnesty said in its report. It noted the revelations from the whistle-blower “Facebook Papers” divulged in October 2021, indicating that company executives knew the site fueled the spread of toxic content against ethnic minorities and other groups. Three legal suits have been lodged against Facebook by Rohingya representatives, in the United States and the United Kingdom as well as with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) group of developed economies, under its guidelines for responsible business conduct. In the US complaint, filed last December in California, the home state of Facebook and its parent company Meta, refugees are seeking US$150 billion in damages. “Meta’s refusal to compensate Rohingya victims to date -– even where the community’s modest requests represent crumbs from the table of the company’s enormous profits -– simply add to the perception that this is a company wholly detached from the reality of its human rights impacts,” Amnesty said. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/paper/2022/09/29/facebook-must-compensate-rohingyas-amnesty.html
