Facebook is currently reckoning with its role in passively enabling human-rights abuses. Over the past few months, the social media platform was accused of censoring activists and journalists documenting incidents of and posting about what the State Department has called “ethnic cleansing” of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority. Posts that contained misinformation and propaganda against the Rohingya — and were meant to incite violence — were allowed on the platform and were shared, and since the News Feed tends to promote already-popular content, they went viral. There has been coverage and documentation of hate speech on Facebook in Myanmar since 2014, so the platform has been aware of the issue for many years. Legal liability is a tricky road though because it is highly unlikely Facebook or other big social platforms will ever be deemed legally liable or legally compelled to accountability for playing a significant role in human-rights abuses around the world because the legal path is murky and long.
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