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All of these reflect a decidedly ad-hoc approach for a multi-billion-dollar tech giant that controls so much of popular discourse in the country and across the world. This includes hiring additional Burmese speakers to review content, improving reporting tools, and “developing local and relevant content” to educate users on how to best use the platform. All rights reserved. Their efforts were largely unsuccessful. While well intentioned, the process showed a profound lack of familiarity with the Burmese language and the context of language use. Still the secrecy around Facebook’s operations persists. Zaw Htay, the government spokesman, has used the platform on numerous occasions to share debunked photos purporting to show Rohingya burning their own homes and derided claims of sexual violence by soldiers as “fake rape.” In the past, he often used a Facebook page with the pseudonym “Hmuu Zaw.”. Zuckerberg responded that what was happening in Myanmar was a “terrible tragedy, and we need to do more,” before Leahy tersely interjected, “We all agree with that.” Zuckerberg then laid out his three fixes for the company’s Myanmar operations. Join Facebook to connect with Myanmar News and others you may know. Many of the posts, he says, compared Muslims to dogs or other animals. (UPDATE, July 19, 2018: Facebook announced on July 18 that it would expand its efforts to remove material that could incite violence. In 2013 an official from Human Rights Watch was largely dismissive that Facebook could play a major role in the spread of hate speech. Community See all. Create New Account. He quickly returned to covering protests and jailings of other journalists while doling out cigarettes to fellow reporters in the informal Yangon press corps. 1,507,683 people follow this. Mizzima provides timely news, features and analysis on Myanmar. Not Now. The scale of this problem was significant and it was already apparent.". One of Thein Sein’s most significant accomplishments was the liberalization of the country’s closed telecommunications sector, which had long been dominated by a state-owned monopoly. Mobile penetration leapt to 56 percent by 2015, according to a Deloitte report, with many Burmese accessing the internet for the first time on phones. The bespectacled, subdued leader surprised observers by embracing a number of reforms—quickly suspending an unpopular Chinese-backed dam project and, in 2012, dropping heavy-handed censorship of the press. (Five people, including a woman who admitted she was paid to make the false rape claim, were eventually sentenced to 21 years in prison for their roles in starting the riots.). (The last of the sanctions were lifted by the fall of 2016, though one former general has been since been sanctioned for his alleged role in the violence against the Rohingya.). In recent months, Facebook has taken some important steps and has acknowledged that the company can do more. 555 likes. Upon his release, he noticed two things—the heavier traffic choking the streets of Yangon and the widespread usage of mobile phones. "The extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination and violence must be independently and thoroughly examined. At the time, the company had just one Burmese speaker based in Dublin, Ireland, to review Burmese language content flagged as problematic, Callan was told. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Land confiscation and human rights violations remained pervasive. ABOUT MIZZIMA - MYANMAR NEWS - ENGLISH EDITION. In a lengthy presentation to company officials, he said Facebook risked being a platform used to foment widespread violence, akin to the way radio broadcasts were used to incite killings during the Rwandan genocide. The campaign in Myanmar looked similar to online influence campaigns from Russia, said Myat Thu, a researcher who studies false news and propaganda on Facebook. 37,924 people like this. Chris Tun, the head of Deloitte’s Myanmar operations and a longtime member of the country’s tech community, received a frantic phone call. In April, Zuckerberg testified before Congress over two days on a myriad of problems within his company, from Russian agents using the platform to influence the US elections to a lack of data protections. He added the company has hired “dozens more Burmese language reviewers,” a refrain that has become so common it is now a running joke in Myanmar tech circles. About See all. Soon, a decision was made by the President’s Office to temporarily block access to Facebook in Mandalay, Zaw Htay says. While the print-outs of the posts used by Senator Leahy were blurred to protect his identity the fact that it was Aung Naing Soe was hardly a secret. ABOUT MIZZIMA - NEWS IN BURMESE. “It is clear they don’t know about the ethnic and social politics in the countries” that they operate in. 1,951,786 people follow this . Myanmar had been ruled since 1962 by successive military regimes that drove the country into political isolation, crippled the economy, oppressed ethnic minorities, and repeatedly put down popular uprisings with deadly force. Zaw Htay did not respond to requests for comment about his controversial posts. Building A3, Wing B, Star City, … But among Myanmar observers and experts, there are already concerns about the role Facebook could play in the country’s 2020 elections. “I named them individually and they all become my friends,” he would say later. In Naypyitaw, the country’s vast capital some 170 miles south of Mandalay, government officials quickly realized the seriousness of the unfolding situation. He said that no representative from the company had been in touch with him regarding the incident. In an interview, Aung Naing Soe says he was approached by a member of Special Branch, a notorious intelligence unit of the Myanmar Police Force, who questioned him about the false accusation of being a member of ARSA, which, in the time it was on Facebook, was widely shared including by a former member of parliament. or. See more of Mizzima - Myanmar News - English Edition on Facebook. Protesters hold placards and chant during a demonstration against Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as she attends an event at the Guildhall in the City of London on May 8, 2017. “Facebook could have done more to proactively talk about positive speech,” he says, “how to look at things on Facebook to avoid pitfalls, and the dangers of negative speech, put their brand behind a more constructive approach to the platform.”. Facebook’s policy toward prohibited content applies to all users, including government officials, Garlick says. Hospitals, Tam calls on provinces to impose tougher rules now, Woman behind ‘Zombie Angelina Jolie’ sentenced to 10 years in Iranian prison. Many among the crowd had seen the Facebook post, which was widely shared including by a Mandalay-based ultra-nationalist monk named Wirathu, who has a massive following across the country. The wars that have riled the country for decades show no signs of abating, and vitriol against the Rohingya continues even as the country makes preparations for their return. Still, the company continued its work with seemingly little local input. Media/News Company. … Callan returned to the company’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters in early March 2014, after follow-up meetings, with an official from a Myanmar tech civil society organization to again raise the issues with the company and show Facebook “how serious it [hate speech and disinformation] was,” Callan says. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Your California Privacy Rights. The state-run telecom provider, Myanma Posts and Telecommunications, partnered with two Japanese firms the same year, further increasing competition and connectivity. Community See all. Meanwhile, the Myanmar government and military have been among the most adept and sophisticated users of Facebook, using the platform to put out their own narrative of the Rohingya crisis. Myanmar’s military has been accused of rape, arson, and arbitrary killing of Rohingya Muslims during a campaign launched last year after militant attacks on police posts. Facebook said on Friday it dismantled dozens of accounts and pages run in Myanmar by commercial operators because of what it described as inauthentic behaviour, including some it said were using fictitious people to back a political party. ), Aung Naing Soe was not in the photo, and it took several attempts and flags for Facebook to finally remove the post. A parliamentary election in 2010 was widely criticized as far from free and fair but an important step for the military’s carefully choreographed transition to quasi-civilian rule. Ad Choices, How Facebook’s Rise Fueled Chaos and Confusion in Myanmar. Last year, a public opinion survey from the International Republican Institute found that 38 percent of people polled got most, if not all, their news from Facebook. WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. The digital transformation was poised to accelerate that year, when the government granted licenses to two foreign telecoms providers—Norway’s Telenor and and Qatar’s Ooredoo—ending the state monopoly. Soon, armed men were marauding through the streets of the royal capital on motorbikes and by foot wielding machetes and sticks. Barack Obama and Myanmar's President Thein Sein shake hands before the East Asia Summit in Myanmar’s capitol, Naypyitaw, in November 2014. Eleven Media Group - English Edition. The UN lambasted Facebook’s conduct in the crisis, which the global body says "bears the hallmarks of genocide,” by serving as a platform for hate speech and disinformation, saying Facebook had "turned into a beast.”. About See All. One message warned Buddhist groups about an imminent attack by Muslims on September 11. When asked specifically about the number of Burmese language speakers monitoring content the company said only that it “added dozens more Burmese language reviewers to handle reports from users across our services, and we plan to more than double the number of content reviewers focused on user reports.”, When asked about Aung Naing Soe’s post and why it took so long for Facebook to remove it, the company said it was “unable to respond without further information on these Pages.”. The country’s internet penetration was less than 1 percent in 2011 and there were just 1.3 million mobile subscribers, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations’ agency. Facebook launches a campaign to highlight the company’s programs to tackle the proliferation of misinformation online head-on. The word, however, is also used in other non-offensive phrases like “kalar pae,” lentil beans, or “kala-awe thee” a type of particularly spicy chili. As hate speech and dubious articles quickly began to surface in volume on Facebook in 2012 and 2013, many targeting Muslims and the Rohingya in particular, the government raised concerns that the site could be used to incite unrest. View the profiles of people named Myanmar News. There were a few things done in late 2014 and 2015 and there was some effort made to try to understand the issues, but it wasn’t a fraction of what was needed,” says David Madden, a gregarious Australian who in 2014 founded Phandeeyar, a tech-hub in Yangon, the country’s largest city, that helped Facebook launch its Burmese language community standards. The social network exploded in Myanmar, allowing fake news and violence to consume a country emerging from military rule. Our Story. Zaw Htay, who now serves at the spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's government, confirmed the phone call took place. If the intentions of the police were to deter Aung Naing Soe from reporting, they didn’t work. But the process lacks scalability and is not efficient, those involved say. This skepticism about the risks of Facebook was rooted in part in a fear that the government or military would use hate speech as an excuse to censor or block certain websites that it did not agree with. The unrest was the latest in a string of flare-ups, often violent, between minority Muslims and Buddhists in the majority-Buddhist country of around 51 million since restrictions on free speech and the internet were steadily loosened starting in 2010. facebook myanmar videos and latest news articles; GlobalNews.ca your source for the latest news on facebook myanmar . Facebook is showing information to help you better understand the purpose of a Page. The volume of hate speech required serious product changes. Contact One News Myanmar on Messenger. There was also mounting frustration over Facebook’s stubborn resistance to sharing information with the civil society groups they relied so heavily on, like the number of people working on Burmese language content monitoring. Log In. That year, the country was enraptured by a visit from President Barack Obama, the first sitting US President to visit Myanmar. UPDATE: This article has been revised to include Facebook's announcement that it will expand its efforts to remove material that could incite violence. For the next two months, whenever he travelled outside of Yangon, he had to inform the officer where he was going, he says. But Facebook’s sprawling bureaucracy and its excitement over the potential of the the Myanmar market appeared to override concerns about the proliferation of hate speech. The accusations against him, originally reported on a blog, exploded when they made its way to Facebook—by then, synonymous with the internet in Myanmar. Myanmar was a small but unique market for the company, and Facebook has taken a multi-faceted approach in recent years to better serve users, Garlick says. Madden, the tech hub founder, flew to California in May 2015 to speak to Facebook executives about Myanmar’s massive growth in online users and the rise of Buddhist nationalism, he also delivered a stark message to Facebook. The Burmese language community standards promised by Garlick, however, would not launch until September 2015, 14 months after she spoke in Yangon. Emergency supplies for Rohingya Muslims soon, armed men were marauding through the streets of the police were deter..., he noticed two things—the heavier traffic choking the streets of Yangon and widespread. Of thinking, new connections, and others you May know city, Pyi. Extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination and violence to a! Dragged into the night but were unsuccessful is because they “ didn ’ t happened. 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