Garlick, Facebook’s director of policy for the Asia-Pacific region, whose remit included Myanmar, told the audience that in response to the violence the company planned to speed up translation of the sites’ user guidelines and code of conduct into Burmese. Facebook launches a campaign to highlight the company’s programs to tackle the proliferation of misinformation online head-on. Aung San Suu Kyi, the wildly popular opposition leader held by the military under house arrest for some 15 years, was barred from participating. Thein Sein was sworn in as president of Myanmar in March 2011 for a five-year term. 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. 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. Still, the company continued its work with seemingly little local input. “It was seen as a connectivity opportunity rather than a big pressing problem,” Callan says. Facebook is preparing to launch its Facebook News service in the UK, which works with news media and includes original reporting. Media/News Company. One … He served more than eight years of his 14-year sentence, passing the time by speaking to spiders and other insects that crawled through his cell. Aela Callan, a foreign correspondent on a fellowship from Stanford University, met with Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications for Facebook, in November 2013 to discuss hate speech and fake user pages that were pervasive in Myanmar. Zuckerberg said Facebook had a three-pronged approach to address issues in Myanmar— “dramatically” ramp up its local language content reviewers, take down accounts of individuals and groups that generate hate speech, and introduce products specially designed for the country, though he offered few details on what these would entail. Myanmar News.Net is a frequented site for those seeking news about Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. 976,264 people like this. "The extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination and violence must be independently and thoroughly examined. News. In Zuckerberg’s retelling of events, he got a call on a Saturday morning that there were messages stoking violence spreading through Facebook Messenger. Forgot account? The population will be more connected than it was five years prior. Log In. “Myanmar is a country run by rumors, where people fill in the blanks,” says Derek Mitchell, who served as US Ambassador to Myanmar from 2012 to 2016. 1,507,683 people follow this. Hospitals, Tam calls on provinces to impose tougher rules now, Woman behind ‘Zombie Angelina Jolie’ sentenced to 10 years in Iranian prison. A person with knowledge of Facebook’s Myanmar operations was decidedly more direct than Allen, calling the roll out of the initiative “pretty fucking stupid.”, Misleading Facebook posts continue to trigger confusion, threats of violence, and government overreach in Myanmar. C4ADS, a Washington-based nonprofit that has worked with firms like data company Palantir, released an exhaustive report detailing hate speech trends and its facilitators in February 2016. Not that the increased government scrutiny deterred Aung Naing Soe from pursuing his work as a journalist. By analyzing the Facebook accounts of 100 monks, politicians, activists, government officials, and laypeople, the group found what it described as a “campaign of hate speech that actively dehumanizes Muslims.”. “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.”. If Facebook did not see the pages, it is because they “didn’t know where to look,” he says. See actions taken by the people who manage and post content. Facebook also had at least two direct warnings before the 2014 riots that hate speech was exploding on the platform and could have real-world consequences. Album. When Tun awoke the next morning, he had five or six emails from Facebook officials concerned over the site being unreachable, he says. 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. Media/News Company. Create New Account. “This is where the culpability comes in, this was made clear at numerous points along the way. Community See All. 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. Forgot account? 555 likes. The arrival of Facebook provided a platform for these rumors to spread at an alarming rate. More than half of Myanmar's 53 million people use the social media platform, which for many is synonymous with the internet. Today, four years since the riots, Facebook’s role in society is again under intense scrutiny, both in Myanmar and around the world. As internet connectivity expanded, so did social media. A curfew was imposed in the city and surrounding townships. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. 13 December 2020. or. In a recent briefing in Washington, DC, one longtime Myanmar expert described the adoption of Facebook that followed this sudden uptick in connectivity as the fastest in the world. “People died, but now you can use this digital sticker.”. facebook myanmar videos and latest news articles; GlobalNews.ca your source for the latest news on facebook myanmar . 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 riots wouldn’t have happened without Facebook. “That’s not 20/20 hindsight. The state-run telecom provider, Myanma Posts and Telecommunications, partnered with two Japanese firms the same year, further increasing competition and connectivity. “He was quite worried.” Facebook does not maintain an office in Myanmar, and there was, according to Tun, confusion over how to reach officials at the company. “All internet companies are like this to some degree, but especially Facebook because it is so leanly staffed on the government relations side. “I think they were more excited about the connectivity opportunity because so many people were using it, rather than the core issues.” Hate speech seemed like a “low priority” for Facebook at the time, she says. “Now, in that case, our systems detect that that’s going on. 139A/ 171A, Gate No-1, May Yu Housing Compound, Corner of May Yu Street & Lower Pazundaung Road, Botahtaung Tsp. One of its most public stumbles came four months after the meeting in May, when it began to remove posts and suspend users for posts including the term “kalar,” a Burmese word often used as a slur for people of South Asian origin. When Telenor and Ooredoo launched operations in 2014, people queued for hours for SIM cards that cost around a dollar. Their efforts were largely unsuccessful. 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. Barack Obama and Myanmar's President Thein Sein shake hands before the East Asia Summit in Myanmar’s capitol, Naypyitaw, in November 2014. It has also rolled out tools to report content on Facebook Messenger and is exploring the possibility of using AI to identify hateful content faster, a spokeswoman says. Eleven Media Group - English Edition. A list of languages that the content reviewers do work in was not available, the spokeswoman said. facebook myanmar generals videos and latest news articles; GlobalNews.ca your source for the latest news on facebook myanmar generals . His son helped him set up a Facebook page days after he was freed in the back of the newspaper’s aging offices. It also angered members of the tech community helping flag dangerous content, because they were blamed by upset users for the policy, though they were not involved with the initiative and were unaware that it would start. Zuckerberg later apologized by email for “not being sufficiently clear” about the role that civil society groups play in monitoring content, according to a copy of the email published by the New York Times. 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. “It is clear they don’t know about the ethnic and social politics in the countries” that they operate in. Waves of violence broke out in the western Rakhine state in 2012 between Muslims and Buddhists, leaving nearly 200 dead and displaced some 140,000, mainly Rohingya Muslims and reverberated across the country in the months and years that followed. "When the media spotlight has been on there has been talk of changes, but after it passes are we actually going to see significant action?” Madden asks. Myanmar had in the past restricted access to the internet, notably during the 2007 monk-led popular uprising dubbed the “Saffron Revolution,” in an failed attempt to keep news of the demonstrations and subsequent crackdown from leaking out. The participants included representatives from Google, the Asia Foundation, and the government, but most in the audience had come to hear—and demand answers—from Mia Garlick. Garlick declined to comment on the group’s work citing security concerns. 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. ), "From at least that Mandalay incident, Facebook knew. More communication, more voices,” Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said in Yangon in March 2013. Rioters torched cars and ransacked shops. Upon his release, he noticed two things—the heavier traffic choking the streets of Yangon and the widespread usage of mobile phones. The Burmese language community standards promised by Garlick, however, would not launch until September 2015, 14 months after she spoke in Yangon. UPDATE: This article has been revised to include Facebook's announcement that it will expand its efforts to remove material that could incite violence. Not Now. Mobile shops appeared seemingly overnight hawking cheap Chinese smartphones. Soon, a decision was made by the President’s Office to temporarily block access to Facebook in Mandalay, Zaw Htay says. 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. … No. News. Tun’s attempts to contact Facebook officials in the United States dragged into the night but were unsuccessful. In recent months, Facebook has taken some important steps and has acknowledged that the company can do more. They are engineering companies and they don’t like spending money where there is not a clear [return on investment].”. 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