Summary:
The Sri Lankan government has accused Facebook for failing to curb the alleged hate speech on its platform that, it contended, contributed to the riots of March 2018. The riots left three people dead and placed the country under a state of emergency. The government accused Facebook of not tackling with the issue rapidly, leading to an escalation of violence. The episode has led to questions being raised across South Asia about the capacity and responsibility of Facebook in monitoring regions with millions of users who post in various languages and dialects.
Allegations:
- Harin Fernando, the Sri Lankan telecommunications minister, said, "Hate speech is not being controlled by these organisations and it has become a critical issue globally." He also highlighted a tweet from a user who claimed to have a reported a Facebook post in the Sinhala language that said "Kill all Muslims, don't even let an infant of the dogs escape." The user claimed to have received a response from Facebook six days later saying that the post did not violate any of the platform's community guidelines.
Defence:
- Facebook claimed to have doubled the number to 14,000 people working to monitor content on the platform in 2017, which included Sinhala speakers. “In response to the situation in Sri Lanka, we have increased our local language capabilities [and] established communications with government and non-governmental organisations to support efforts to identify and remove such content,” it said.
- In response to the government restriction on the use of Facebook and WhatsApp following the riots, said in a statement, "We are concerned with the way access to the internet is being restricted and depriving people of important connections and expression, and we hope that access will be restored soon."