Rohingya Survivors of Genocide promulgated by Facebook pushed out of Myanmar facing bleak future

I can say that ….I am worried over Facebook

What started as a force for good is now becoming a highway to hell. Of the three kinds of communications dominating our lives: the internet, mobile phones and social media, I am addressing only social media, in particular Facebook. I am adding my voice to the mounting fear of Facebook’s power over our communications and culture and civilisation.  It is but one part of the world wide web but it is the one rising most rapidly, with the biggest number of users and little control.  Its private company owners are glorying in its power and profit-making. In his testimony before the US Congress in April 2018, Mark Zuckerburg was heavily criticized for blatant violations of election laws and Facebook’s own codes of behaviour but he conceded little even when faced with admitting Facebook had sold private data to Cambridge Analytica. In a lawsuit Facebook counsel Orin Snyder said “there is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy”. The US and Australia and other governments say they want to set some rules to control it. But Facebook now seems too big to fail and maybe too powerful to control.

Facebook has done Good 

Of course Facebook has done some good. It has brought us great benefits by making the world a smaller place, by socialising people into their communities through myriad groups in schools, charities, sports clubs, interest groups of all kinds. It has taken them beyond their communities to national and international places across continents and into small villages and large cities in Australia, America and Europe as well as Asia, Africa and even war-torn  Middle East.  It has offered emotional support and socialising opportunities to lonely people, teenagers and adults networking inside and outside their professions. It has offered opportunities for advertising and selling products outside the main web sites and initiated connections between old friends and friends of friends. It has been used to inform people of impending natural disasters and connecting them to emergency services.It has reported on war zones faster than journalists. It has also connected people quickly in uprisings such as the Arab Spring movements in Tunisia and Egypt and in protests in Iran. Facebook distributes it all and launches it all on the world wide web. Facebook is the world’s biggest social platform with 2.4 billion users and is the biggest change in the lives of the biggest number of people in human history. 

Facebook is now becoming Bad

Facebook listed on the US stock exchange in 2012 and is now a behemoth of power and influence and profits. Beyond merely socialising users, myriad Facebook sites now influence, show and advocate bad as well as good: violent behaviours and messages of hatred and insurrection. Facebook has allowed these bad uses and encouraged them because they are profitable. Russians buying thousands of fake news sites influenced the US 2016 election causing an unforeseen victory for Donald Trump. Robert Mueller’s recent US report identified dozens of Russian individuals and companies and many social media sites wreaking havoc, supporting Donald Trump and attacking Hilary Clinton. Similar interference in the British referendum on Brexit achieved the Russian-preferred outcome of breaking up Europe. There are also paid advertisements and Facebook sites for criminal, terrorist, paedophile, violent, women-hating and pornographic material, conspiracy theories and political and commercial hoaxes.  The list of complaints against Facebook is now a mile high. I guess the misogynist sites are not surprising given Facebook originated at Harvard dorms when Mark Zuckerburg and friends started ranking girls as “hot or not” in early 2004, clearly reinforcing their worldview of male dominance. The #MeToo movement is now challenging this prevailing worldview. Nonetheless aggressive sex, violence, pornography and blackmail still prevail extensively on Facebook,  teaching its young users that anyone can be a “friend” and that violent sex is OK.

Four Menacing Faces of Facebook

I outline only four examples of what worries me about Facebook:

1. Facebook is spreading fake news, disinformation, hoaxes, deceptions, conspiracy theories, hate speech and trolling extensively

2. Facebook is spreading violence and genocide

3. Facebook is threatening our institutions and democracy

4. Facebook is Allowing Vaccination Hoaxes and Spreading disease 

1. Facebook is spreading fake news, disinformation, hoaxes, deceptions, conspiracy theories, hate speech and trolling extensively

Russia isn’t rich enough or powerful enough any more to conduct its international relations through traditional global politics, diplomacy and trade. China is still establishing itself as an international player. So both now have government-supported mega factories of people cyberattacking government departments and corporations and posting social media advertisements and posts routinely in the US, Europe and Australia using internet sites and social media especially Facebook. We know that Russia has established a huge 300-400 person factory in St Petersburg which has set up millions of fake accounts to create fake news, alternative facts, false narratives, disinformation, hate speeches, hoaxes and abuse of  people unfriendly to their views. For example Russia has vigorously defended its illegitimate annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, conducted election disrupting fake news in US and Britain and strongly supported right-wing disruptive groups in European elections through this factory. Jessikka Aro a Finnish woman who worked in the St Petersburg troll factory and later exposed them is reported in The Australian 30 May 2019 newspaper as receiving death threats, even from friends who believed the smear campaigns. Even her mother and sister have been targeted. It was claimed she was in the pay of the CIA, Finnish Security and NATO. She has been repeatedly accused of being a drug user, a drug dealer, a brain-damaged whore, a security threat to law-abiding Finnish people.  She continues to journal what is being disseminated from the Russian troll factory in which she worked four years ago. Finnish police think she may face a threat of impulsive violence if she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. She moved overseas from Helsinki. In 2018 three people were convicted in the Finnish courts for stalking and defaming her. 

2. Facebook is spreading violence and genocide

The most evil act of deliberate hatred and violence caused by Facebook in my view has been the 2016, 2017 and 2018 genocide in Myanmar/Burma. Like almost everyone else in the world I couldn’t understand why the Rohingya muslim minority was suddenly ambushed, raped and murdered and hurled out of Myanmar by its dominant Buddhists. I thought Buddhists were gentle and peace-loving people, notwithstanding Burma/Myanmar’s ugly long-term authoritarian military rulers. In 2016 and 2017 these military rulers successfully stirred up the population in a campaign of hatred and bigotry against the Rohingyas on social media, mainly Facebook, falsely claiming they were cannibals (using distorted pictures) and claiming they were attacking government buildings and military personnel (when they were only defending themselves from attack). As well as false claims the military rulers used scare tactics such as advertisements: “would you send your children to school with Rohingyas?” Disinformation was everywhere in the social media. Millions of people in a third world country that still needed basic services had a communications system capable of penetrating even into remote rural villages and creating support for genocide.  Over 750,000 of Myanmar’s 1 million Rohingyas have been murdered or expelled. These actions were called genocide in a UN Resolution. And this happened despite a democratically elected Nobel Peace Prize Laureate leader Aung San Suu Kyi  sharing government with these military leaders . Despite our disbelief that she could do it, she has been personally involved according to reputable observers. I think this genocide is risking the creation of the next ISIS movement in the exiled Rohingyas. 

3. Facebook is threatening our institutions and democracy 

The most damaging effects of Facebook “weaponising” disinformation is on our important institutions: our governments, our laws and our culture. Facebook content increasingly challenges and threatens western democracies. In a 19 May 2019 briefing sent to members, a US-based not for profit organization Avaaz, the globe’s largest and most powerful online activist network, outlined the enormous dangers of disinformation. Because we are hardwired to believe bad news more than good, we are being targeted by authoritarian leaders and disinformation factories.  Brazil’s new president Bolsonaro makes Trump look like a saint. He praises dictators, wants to destroy the Amazon and says gay children should be beaten up. Like Trump, polls said he stood no chance of winning but he won. How? Avaaz says by using disinformation. His supporters used thousands of fake accounts to flood social media with toxic lies confusing voters and creating distrust. He accused his opponent of being a paedophile. His supporters drove viliglante groups and destroyed trust in mainstream media and other political leaders. They used the same tactics as the Russian troll factory.

4. Facebook is allowing vaccination hoaxes and spreading disease

Right now in 2019 Facebook is also threatening our health. In the US there have been 971 measles cases in the first five months of 2019, 8 more than in all of 1994 when the last big outbreak of 963 occurred and much bigger than 2018 count of 372, federal health officials said, adding that it has occurred “in part because of the spread of misinformation about vaccines”. They went on to reassure parents that vaccines are safe, they do not cause autism and they are safer than the disease they prevent. Ten weeks after Facebook claimed it was removing vaccine misinformation, it remains widely available on the site. Even now Facebook is still running ads for a prominent group that claims doctors have conspired to hide evidence of harm vaccines do to children. And Facebook anti-vaccine advocates have continued to troll vaccine proponents such as Professor Peter Hotez a US academic who develops vaccines for neglected diseases and has an autistic daughter. They claim he is profiteering from harming children.

In EU elections we see some hope for Facebook’s declining influence

However in late May 2019, Avaaz triumphantly announced a big win overcoming disinformation. After Trump, Brexit and Bolsonaro successes Europe was to be the next target as the last reliably democratic global power which had to be drowned in fake news and hate by the disinformation factories. But Avaaz exposed and forced the takedown of the largest disinformation networks ever created which had racked up 3 billion views a year, enough to reach every voter 20 times. Because the disinformation extremists had pushed for disenchantment and people refusing to vote,  Avaaz encouraged people to vote. And they did. The EU election had the highest voter turnout in 25 years!  Avaaz’s success in finding and fighting bogus sites in many EU countries made front page news around the world. A Director-General of the EU Jaume Duch Guillot said” Avaaz has been a driving force helping the European Parliament mobilize people to vote”  What I admire most is that Avaaz trained its people to find and fight and remove disinformation sites that EU government people couldn’t find. Their techniques are now being refined and implemented in several countries. I hope will be included in legislation that many countries are contemplating.

Why I have personal concerns about Facebook

In mid-March 2019 a few days after the Christchurch attack at a family gathering in Newcastle I watched in horror as a teenage boy proudly showed me his Facebook video of the Christchurch  massacre as a display of his progress in life. I don’t know whether he was showing off the violence like he would a video game or just proud to have procured the video so quickly through his social media network. He was scornful when I said he shouldn’t spread such horrible news because it is scary and it belittled him. I think he did not see the violence as needing to be feared. Facebook took 69 minutes to remove this violent video but it had penetrated far and wide by then. This delay in removing the video prompted our Prime Minister Scott Morrison to move to control Facebook with legislation. 

Australia has introduced world-first legislation to control social media

The Australian Government introduced world-first legislation in April 2019 requiring social media to remove terrorist material from their sites or be fined millions of dollars or jailed. Australia and many other countries are straining to create workable regulations to control displays of terrorism like Christchurch. Even more difficult to control will be other errant and more covert behaviours: encouraging violence, undermining democracy, tax dodging, uncompetitive conduct, weakening their own workers’ rights, invading privacy, facilitating cyber attacks, spreading fake news, undermining security, fuelling social unrest and threatening the safety of children.  Damage control in Facebook will take a huge international effort but needs to be addressed.

Others are also considering constraining Facebook

In late March 2019 in Cuffelinksa finance newsletter connecting investors with ideas, Grahame Hand and Chris Cuffe said that following the Christchurch terrorism,  “fund managers across Australia are debating whether Facebook meets their ethical investing criteria. It’s a crucial decision as the company is one of the biggest global investments in the super industry.  Vivid Social estimates there are 15 million Facebook users in Australia, or 60% of the population. Almost three million are over the age of 55”. They then  list what we agree to when we sign up to Facebook: allowing commercial use of everything we tell them, who we are, what pages we look at and what sites we visit, what we share, our purchases, and our address book. Did you realize that we’ve given Facebook these powers? I must admit I didn’t. These Facebook protocols clearly need to be changed when governments set up controls. 

Facebook is cleaning up (without hurting the profit bottom line)

In the first quarter of 2019 Facebook has said it disabled 2.19 billion fake accounts, removed four million hate-speech posts and removed 670,000 firearm sale posts. The removals were detected with artificial intelligence. AI also caught 98% of the violent content before users reported it (but no actual number is given!) Facebook is also beginning to use AI to detect and remove the sale of guns and drugs and monitor and remove child exploitation posts.(Kate Conger San Francisco 23 May 2019)  I see these figures as mind-blowing wake-up calls to our governments to act: they need to specify what needs to be controlled and what will not be tolerated in the public domain. I see this self-reporting by Facebook as raising more questions than it answers. For example Facebook still cites a fear of removing legitimate content (read “paid content”) as a problem similar to finding and removing  illegitimate content.

Was social media a mistake?  

Like Alan Kohler (The Australian 30 April 2019) I ask this question rhetorically because there’s no going back now. He added “The scale of it has no precedent, and they have only just started”  I do take some heart from the very recent early June news from the US that it will revive Anti-Trust legislation and consider reining in the power of the internet giants: Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook. How are they responding to the threat? They are responding already by spending “freely to gain influence and access” according to the New York Times of 6 June. The headline is “Tech Giants Amass a Lobbying Army for an Epic Washington Battle” It sure will be a monumental fight.

Zrinka 9 June 2019