This is a cop-out. Hateful false information, with violent consequences, is being spread by a company profiting from its distribution.
We don’t say, in the event of food poisoning, “we can’t blame the restaurant because if they weren’t here someone else would be poisoning people.” We fine the business and send a message to the industry that said behaviour is unacceptable.
Facebook is contributing to and profiting from atrocities. That rightfully merits scrutiny, of Facebook and ad-driven social media companies generally.
What I mean is that the service provided by Facebook is somewhat trivial - it can easily be replaced by emails, chats, or any of the countless ways to communicate via the internet. Shutting down Facebook will not solve the problems in Myanmar.
I think the only solution to this problem is education.
Facebook isn’t concerned about being “blamed for censorship” when it benefits their bottom line [1].
> This is a difficult problem to solve
The first step is recognising that ad-driven reaction-oriented social media does not appear to positively self-correct.
[1] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/technology/facebook-ce...
The tendency of the news feed to promote attention grabbing content biases it to extremes, and this is definitely a systemic problem, and shouldn't be ignored and swept under the rug.
Eventually - decades after the massacres in Rwanda - those responsible for the genocide-promoting radio station have been given long prison sentences.
It’s also wrong: Facebook doesn’t have a competitor in its core market, and the idea that people would start thinking “you know, Facebook is great. But I just wish there were a platform just like it with a bit more calls to violence against minority groups” is ludicrous.
You’re just asserting this without any argument, even though it was addressed in the post you’re responding to.
What would be used instead of Facebook? If that other platform is as convenient and effective as FB, why is it not used today?
And since you are agreeing that censorship of hate could help: why do you believe the appropriate distribution of the responsibility for such censorship is more important than stopping a genocide?
The content on these sites is also so far away from common decency that people will not the mistake of thinking that messages they read there are acceptable in common discourse.