Myanmar has been in a state of internal conflict over the Rohingyas, who the radical locals believe don’t have a place in their country, and now Facebook has stepped up its efforts to combat the rising racial tensions via its social media platform.
In an effort to diminish the spread of hate, discrimination and misinformation via Facebook, the company has removed 18 Facebook accounts, one Instagram account and 52 Facebook pages, which were followed by 12 million people.
The data on the accounts and pages removed has been preserved for further scrutiny, if necessary. This effort was started earlier this month when the company realised the gravity of the situation in Myanmar.
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The company has banned 20 individuals and organisations from Facebook in Myanmar, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing — commander-in-chief of the armed forces — and the Myawady television network run by the military.
“International experts, most recently in a report by the UN Human Rights Council-authorized Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, have found evidence that many of these individuals and organizations committed or enabled serious human rights abuses in the country,” Facebook stated.
Facebook aims at preventing radical elements in Myanmar from using their social networking website to propagate ethnic and religious tensions.
With this in mind, they removed another six pages and six accounts from Facebook, and one from Instagram.
As a part of their guideline where pages and accounts cannot engage in ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’, Facebook also removed 46 pages and 12 accounts.
“This is a huge responsibility given so many people there rely on Facebook for information — more so than in almost any other country given the nascent state of the news media and the recent rapid adoption of mobile phones.”
Related read: Why Facebook removed 32 pages and accounts in the USA
