5 April 2018<\/p>\n
Yangon, Myanmar<\/p>\n
Dear Mark,<\/p>\n
We listened to your \u200bVox interview\u200b with great interest and were glad to hear of your personal concern and\u00a0 engagement with the situation in Myanmar.<\/p>\n
As representatives of Myanmar civil society organizations and the people who raised the Facebook\u00a0 Messenger threat to your team\u2019s attention, we were surprised to hear you use this case to praise the\u00a0 effectiveness of your \u2018systems\u2019 in the context of Myanmar. From where we stand, this case exemplifies the\u00a0 very opposite of effective moderation: it reveals an over-reliance on third parties, a lack of a proper\u00a0 mechanism for emergency escalation, a reticence to engage local stakeholders around systemic solutions\u00a0 and a lack of transparency.<\/p>\n
Far from being an isolated incident, this case further epitomizes the kind of issues that have been rife on\u00a0 Facebook in Myanmar for more than four years now and the inadequate response of the Facebook team. It\u00a0 is therefore instructive to examine this Facebook Messenger incident in more detail, particularly given your\u00a0 personal engagement with the case.<\/p>\n
The messages (pictured and translated below) were clear examples of your tools being used to incite real\u00a0 harm. Far from being stopped, they spread in an unprecedented way, reaching country-wide and causing\u00a0 widespread fear and at least three violent incidents in the process. The fact that there was no bloodshed is\u00a0 testament to our community\u2019s resilience and to the wonderful work of peacebuilding and interfaith\u00a0 organisations. This resilience, however, is eroding daily as our community continues to be exposed to\u00a0 virulent hate speech and vicious rumours, which Facebook is still not adequately addressing.<\/p>\n
Over-reliance on third parties\u00a0 In your interview, you refer to your detection \u2018systems\u2019. We believe your system, in this case, was us \u2013 and\u00a0 we were far from systematic. We identified the messages and escalated them to your team via email on\u00a0 Saturday the 9th September, Myanmar time. By then, the messages had already been circulating widely for\u00a0 three days.\u00a0\u00a0 The Messenger platform (at least in Myanmar) does not provide a reporting function, which would have\u00a0 enabled concerned individuals to flag the messages to you. Though these dangerous messages were\u00a0 deliberately pushed to large numbers of people \u2013 many people who received them say they did not\u00a0 personally know the sender \u2013 your team did not seem to have picked up on the pattern. For all of your data,\u00a0 it would seem that it was our personal connection with senior members of your team which led to the issue\u00a0 being dealt with.<\/p>\n