Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar is probable the clearest example, which Facebook has even acknowledged itself[1], after a UN fact-finding mission investigated the relationship between social media and the racist sentiment in the country[2]

"The Mission has examined documents, publications, statements, Facebook posts and audio-visual materials that have contributed to shaping public opinion on the Rohingya and Muslims more generally. The analysis demonstrates that a carefully crafted hate campaign has developed a negative perception of Muslims among the broad population in Myanmar. This campaign has been the work of a few key players: nationalistic political parties and politicians, leading monks, academics, prominent individuals and members of the Government. This hate campaign, which continues to the present day, portrays the Rohingya and other Muslims as an existential threat to Myanmar and to Buddhism"

I'm not even sure I can take the second point in good faith. Violence having decreased compared to historical high points has literally nothing to say on whether social media itself causes violence. Other factors can easily explain an overall decline, which obviously is not uniform. If you live in one of the countries in which social media is used as a means to instigate genocides, I can tell you that more safety in a US city will matter very little to you.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...

[2]https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/FFM-Myanm...

You have basically responded with an ancidote. Nearly all forms of media can and have contributed to violence. What evidence is there that Facebook is especially noxious? Facebook isn't especially old, I remember a world pre-Facebook book and we still had things hate and violence in roughly the same proportion.

Furthermore did the lack of Facebook produce better outcomes for Muslims in China? The world is complicated place, the answer probably isn't as simple as "Facebook is bad".

A case study of a nation-wide butchering of more than 24000 people is not an anecdote. If that's not enough then I'm not sure what sort of evidence it is you're looking for.

And again, the issue is not the state of violence in the world or just Facebook, which is why I used 'social media' more generally at the end of my last post, it's the ways in which those companies uniquely contribute to violence.

You don't need to be responsible for all violence in the world to be held accountable for the violence you cause. The fact that the world is complicated and violent doesn't absolve actors from their responsibility. Social media is quite unique in many ways. From mass bot-networks to influence campaigns that disguise themselves as bottom-up, to speed and virality that no other medium has, to lack of accountability and the ease at which information moves cross borders and enables nefarious states to conduct sabotage.

And China is not a good example either. It's probably the prime example of a country that has used digital technologies, including social media, to build a dystopian surveillance network, including on Uyghurs, that could not otherwise function.

You can not compare it with islam. Look at middle east. Islam is a religion designed on violence and it gets what it asks for everywhere in the world, even within muslim countries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com