Controversial political information and advertisements from the United States to Sri Lanka have been heavily criticized on Facebook. Two years ago, Facebook apologized for its role in a recent investigation revealing that the social networking site Facebook was widely used for deadly racial violence against the Muslim community in Sri Lanka.
The riots in early 2018 erupted as anti-Muslim anger spread on social media, forcing the Sri Lankan government to impose a state of emergency and block access to Facebook.
The tech giant has launched an investigation into the role it played, and investigators say the inflammatory content on Facebook may have led to violence against Muslims.
“We describe the misuse of our platform,” Facebook said in a statement to Bloomberg News: “We recognize the real human rights implications and apologize.”
At least three people have been killed and at least 20 injured in the 2018 unrest in which mosques and businesses were set on fire by Sinhala-Buddhist majority groups, mainly provoked by opposition politicians.
In the run-up to Sri Lanka’s 2019 presidential election, Facebook was criticized by civil society groups for refusing to actually test political ads.
According to the report, some Sinhala language posts have suggested that “Muslim extremists” have destroyed a Sri Lankan heritage by using photographs of broken Buddhist statues, and the chief incumbent of the temple confirmed to AFP that such an attack had not taken place. . But the post has not been removed.
Authorities imposed a blockade on Facebook in 2018 after three people were killed and hundreds of mosques, homes and businesses were reduced to ashes in a fiery post by Buddhist extremists. Facebook spokesman Amrit Ahuja said, “We made a mistake. We were very slow. ”
The problem is exacerbated by the lack of fluent speakers of Sinhala, the language spoken by Sri Lanka’s largest ethnic group, and government officials and activists say extremist content could thrive beyond recognition on stage. Facebook is committed to recruiting more Sinhala speakers, but declined to say how many are currently employed in Sri Lanka.
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