The Rohingya Genocide: How Facebook Fueled Ethnic Cleansing in Myanmar

this is koutu palang the largest refugee camp in the world there's nearly a million people here it's located here at

the southern tip of Bangladesh near a place called Cox's Bazaar the people here are mostly rohinga Muslims a people

who now have no country that's because in 2017 the military and citizens in their Homeland Myanmar forced them out

in a brutal ethnic cleansing that left thousands dead their homes and Villages burned to the

[Music] ground so let me tell you their story how they ended up here and hopefully

you'll understand why this video is a fundraiser for these people to try to lighten their

burden Myanmar is no stranger to conflict between its many ethnic groups but the violence that caused the rohinga

to flee their homes that forced a million people into this refugee camp was different it was violence that was

fueled by hateful messages and disinformation inflammatory fake stories spread by Buddhist nationalists and

extremists and even the military of Myanmar these messages were spread and Amplified by one social media platform

that swept the country a western tech company that hoped to Corner the market in Mar and profit immensely in this

country a country that was just starting to use the internet let me show you how this

happened ultimately this is a story about misinformation and radicalization on the internet there are other bad

things that can happen on the internet and I'm going to pause the story right now to tell you about the sponsor of

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let's get back to this very important story about the internet and Facebook in Myanmar Myanmar used to be called Burma

and it used to be closed off to the world for decades it was ruled by military dictators who kept the country

closed and poor and oppressed the military dictators belonged to the Burmese Buddhist majority and had a

particular fixation on marginalizing the Muslim minority called the rohinga over the years they stripped the rohinga of

their rights not letting them move around the country and in the'80s they passed a law that said that these

rohinga people were not actually Burmy citizens but then in 2010 in a surprise move things in Myanmar started changing

myanmar's new dawn has been a long time coming the Burmese president has hiled a new chapter in relations with the United

States after Decades of isolation new leadership came to power and began opening up the country to the outside

world soon cell phones were flooding into the country at an astounding rate jumping from nearly no cell phones in

2006 to 90% penetration by 2016 cell phone towers started popping up all over the place connecting the country to the

internet at a Breakneck speed that internet adoption rate explodes from 1 half of 1% to 40% and I know that might

not sound like a lot if you're in the United States and everybody is is on the internet but when you were in a society

where no one is online and suddenly half of the country is online that is huge that's my old Vox colleague Max fiser a

journalist who recently wrote a book about social media algorithms and their role in stoking extremism in Myanmar and

elsewhere like you go to a village and there might only be a few people who have cell phones that have internet

access but those people are relaying what they're seeing there to everyone that they're meeting for Venture backed

US tech companies like Facebook looking for new users this overnight internet adoption in Myanmar looked like an

opportunity 50 million potential users who are just coming online for the first time so Facebook made deals with local

phone providers making it so that smartphones came pre-loaded with the Facebook app and that these new internet

users could browse Facebook for free without using any of their expensive mobile data more and more people spread

online and alongside that Facebook rapidly spread throughout the country I remember that number 40% internet

adoption rate well almost the exact same proportion the country 38% in 2016 says that they primarily get their news from

Facebook that's huge 38% is way bigger than any media source that I can think of in the United States by this huge

proportion for most people in Myanmar Facebook was the internet Facebook was the news and almost immediately videos

like this start showing up I [Music] this is ashin Wu a Buddhist monk who is

the leader of the 969 movement it's an extremist movement that focuses on the rohinga spreading conspiracy theories

about them how they're invading the country how they're planning to destroy the Burmese people watatu called himself

the Burmese Bin Laden and he made a career out out of becoming an anti- ringia preacher one of his main methods

was always paper pamphlets and leaflets he would distribute these throughout the country to spread his lies and his

conspiracies about the rohinga but in 2003 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for all of this hate speech but

he was released early in 2012 right as Myanmar was changing opening up becoming connected to the internet as Wu entered

burmes Society he found a new tool to spread his anti- ringa messages an algorithm designed to serve users

content that will engage them that will outrage them that will keep them on the platform for as long as possible so that

a tech company in California can sell ads and make money so the thing that the Facebook algorithm learns to promote in

Myanmar very quickly is hatred of the Muslim minority over the next few years weu found a home for his hate speech on

Facebook and YouTube but mostly Facebook which had quickly become the country's favorite social media platform this

significantly Amplified his reach to hundreds of thousands of Facebook users in the

country and he was just one of many spreading lies and conspiracies about the rohinga heat speech conspiracies and

incitements to violence all directed at the country's Muslim minority are just overrunning the platform over the next 5

years tension between the Burmese Buddhist majority and the rohinga Muslim minority turn more and more violent as

the country grapples with the rapid change in economic growth associated with opening up to the world this

tension and racism in no way was caused by Facebook but it was on Facebook that a troubling pattern started to

emerge somewhere in the country there's a crime it's allegedly committed by some rohinga person like the alleged assault

assault and murder of a Burmese Woman by a group of rohinga men news of the crime spreads like wildfire some of it making

it onto social media remember Facebook was the news for many people and of course we all know what happens on the

internet as it spreads the story changes conspiracies emerge that the rohinga are stockpiling weapons or that they are

actually foreign Invaders and that they're planning to take over anti- rohinga voices with big followings chime

in saying that this is proof of what they've been saying all along the rohinga are planning to take over the

country and they must be expelled and soon the fight goes from social media to the doorsteps of the rohinga people

themselves a state of emergency has been declared in Western Burma where deadly clashes between Buddhists and Muslims

have killed at least 17 people hundreds of homes were set Al light the first massive outbreak of violence in this era

happened in 2012 we're burning Ring's houses because they live near our village and they gather at night and try

to attack us ordinary Burmese citizens heed the call raiding rohinga Villages and burning them to the

ground the security forces had to step in but not to stop the violence instead to help the destruction Witnesses report

that the security forces wouldn't let the rohinga extinguish the fire that was burning down their houses even when they

tried they just stood by and let it happen from this 2012 incident which is kind of the beginning of our story the

government officially reported that 192 people were killed 86 00 homes destroyed but experts say that the numbers are

almost certainly much higher 140,000 rohinga were forced to leave their home many fleeing to neighboring

Bangladesh Facebook didn't play a huge role in this first major outbreak of violence back in 2012 the platform was

new and just getting started but this pattern of conspiracies and rumors spreading on the platform and then

leading to real world violence that pattern continued to grow as more and more people got on Facebook and soon it

would play a role in helping Buddhist extremists commit what many call [Music]

genocide so where's Facebook the company in all of this there was this journalist and digital researcher Ella Kellen was

in Myanmar conducting research on a Stanford Fellowship looking into hate speech online and she's seen this

pattern emerge she's so alarmed she flies all the way back to Silicon Valley to meet with people at Facebook to say

hey this is really dangerous it's really bad it turns out she learns in that meeting that Facebook has exactly one

moderator who speaks burmes which is one of the many languages spoken in myammar which basically means it's entirely

ungoverned Ken attempts to sound the alarm she's warning them in this meeting with Facebook Executives this is really

dangerous what you were doing is really destabilizing for this country at a really fragile and really tenuous moment

and they basically do nothing and this happens over and over again in the 4 years between when Facebook arrives in

Myanmar and when the genocide starts this was a part of a larger Trend not just from Facebook but the whole

International Community they didn't want to focus on the dark side of what was going on in Myanmar they wanted to focus

on the positive aspects myanmar's miraculous and sudden opening up to the world the world's attitude is hey this

was a extreme authoritarian military dictatorship closed off from the outside world that is opening up they're having

elections they're having democracy they're turning away from China towards the West isn't this great just a month

after this first spat of violence President Obama visits Myanmar and meets with the government foreign companies

continue to invest in the economy of Myanmar and Facebook's presence as a key source of information continues to

spread but under the surface in the algorithmic feeds of millions of users hate and conspiracy was being rewarded

with attention the algorithm feeding it to more and more users enraging them inflaming them confirming their beliefs

and their biases according to Human Rights campaigners 20 Muslim Students were murdered here in March when

religious violence swept through this city in central Myanmar Wu's audience kept growing into the hundreds of

thousands his speeches reaching a larger and larger audience in the patter continued in the town of mtila an

argument in a muslim-owned gold shop turned into a brawl leaving a Buddhist man injured Buddhist extremists post

inciting messages on Facebook saying that more attacks are coming that the rohinga are

dangerous and once again what started in the news feed turns into a violent Buddhist mob roaming the streets forcing

people out of their homes burning mosques to the ground killing dozens and once again the security Security Forces

largely stand by allowing another massacre in fact the military starts to participate in a new way restricting the

movement of the rohinga forcing them into camps and not letting them leave in response to these conditions

some rohinga form an Insurgency group and start fighting back but they're totally outmatched extremism on Facebook

continues to grow and in March of 2014 Ellen once again makes the trip to Silicon Valley to deliver a warning hate

speech and disinformation are spreading on the platform and it will lead to violence but once again Facebook did

nothing they still only had one burmes Speaking moderator who wasn't even in the country who was expected to keep all

of this under control and sure enough a few months later wiu uses Facebook to Target a Muslim tea shop telling lies

about the owners and giving his followers their name and address hundreds of followers take to the street

burning down Muslim owned businesses and killing two the violence mostly targeting the minority rohinga Community

has killed more than 200 people and made 140,000 hopeless Facebook still wouldn't step in so the Myanmar government had to

they blocked Facebook in the city of Mandalay where the violence was happening it was the strongest warning

yet that Facebook was indeed driving violence in the country this and more warnings from experts was a wakeup call

but Facebook only ends up making promises but takes no aggressive action to stop hate speech on their platform

and they continue to focus what they're good at growth and expansion the thing that will make them

money in 2016 a think tank in Washington DC releases a report that analyzes 32,000 Facebook accounts in Myanmar

these were accounts of everyday users and the report found that these accounts were overwhelmed with hateful messages

against the rohinga and just when you think that Facebook's enabling role couldn't get

any worse the milit of Myanmar joins the platform they create Pages pretending to be news sites or beauty and lifestyle

Pages they gain huge followings and then they sprinkle in propaganda they amplify the tensions between Buddhists and

rohinga they post graphic photos of corpses saying that the rohinga were attacking that jihadist attacks would be

carried out any day and the conspiracies kept getting more and more extreme oh yeah the Muslims in my Village are

stockpiling guns at the beest of Saudi Arabia and and they're they're going to take over unless we go and kill them

first and it would get thousands of shares so what we're looking at is Facebook not just amplifying hate speech

posted by the average citizen or by extremists but the platform being used as a tool of psychological warfare by a

military trying to create fear and mistrust in its own people it was a giant escalating mob hatred towards the

rohinga which wasn't new in Myanmar these ethnic tensions go back decades but it was different now because the mob

in this case wasn't just someone's Village or Community it was the entire country being viewed through the lens of

a technology that serves up the most extreme and engaging content that polarizes in the name of Engagement it

was a ticking Time Bomb one that went off in 2016 and [Music]

2017 because the rohinga insurgents were fighting back in 2016 the military starts performing what they call

clearance operations going Village to Village burning down homes and driving the rohinga out these clearance

operations lead to the death of hundreds of rohinga 990,000 more people are forced to flee their home over the

border to a refugee camp in Bangladesh and once again they meet little to no push back from their government or the

International Community they now had a Playbook it was a new level of violence not just from the polarized people but

now from the military itself seeing this violence break out in early 2017 d David Madden who ran a tech startup in Myanmar

traveled to Facebook headquarters to give them a final warning that their platform is spreading hate and that the

situation in Myanmar is getting really bad this was his second time delivering such a warning but like all the others

before him he was ignored a few months later it's the summer of 2017 and watatu is ated again visiting rakine state

where the rohinga live delivering one of his signature hateful sermons which is being Amplified by local media and of

course his Following on Facebook the next month rohinga insurgents launch another attack on security forces in

rakine state the attacks lead to 12 security Personnel [Music]

deaths and this was the final justification that the military was looking for to do what they had been

planning and plotting for years it happened quickly and violently armed men marched from Village to Village across

rine state in one of these clearance operations they were joined by civilians feeling more justified in their racism

than ever it's a chilling and detailed account of what can only be described as a premeditated Massacre and together the

military and the civilians kicked down doors they burned down homes and mosques they killed indiscriminately committing

horrific acts of violence the Rampage was widespread and systematic theja villagers had fled in Terror when troops

and their own Buddhist neighbor rampaged into chenar and then torched it hundreds of villages burned to the

ground this Geo dat obtained through satellite imagery shows the areas that were burned and destroyed by this

extermination campaign and it helps us see just how widespread this was it was Swift and violent it was systematic and

it was an effort Led Out by the military and joined by local people who had been radicalized for years by anti- ringia

prop propaganda more and more of it being spread throughout the country by the unmonitored algorithms of

[Music] Facebook tens of thousands of rohinga killed and over 700,000 fleeing for

their lives ending up in a refugee camp in Bangladesh to outside observers this

event might have looked like spontaneous violence but this was actually the result of a coordinated campaign by a

few key people with access to technology that allowed them to reach Millions to lie to them in the most hateful ways to

warp their realities it was a full-scale ethnic cleansing and it was in part fueled and enabled by an ungoverned

social media platform even after the violence the Burmese military continued to use

Facebook writing one post that said that the rohinga problem had actually been an unfinished job that had finally been

solved and by solved he means the organized murder of tens of thousands of innocent people and the forced expulsion

of almost a million of them the UN would refer to this campaign as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing others used

the word genocide and only after this horrific event did Facebook actually respond it wasn't until 2018 when they

finally took down the pages of senior military officials who were spreading lies and calls to violence on their

platform the UN came in to investigate how this happened how another genocide happened on our watch They concluded

that Facebook had been quote a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate they also noted that Facebook

declined to share with them data that would have helped with their [Music]

investigation in 2021 these military leaders who were responsible for this ethnic cleansing of the rohinga people

they took over the country again they removed the elected government and yet another coup koutu palang the refugee

camp in Bangladesh now holds over 1 million people most of them rohinga fleeing the violence in their home

country the government of Bangladesh wants to return them to Myanmar but International observers and the rohinga

themselves say that there's no way they could do that safely after all the government in power is the one that

massacred them returning to Myanmar now would be more dangerous than ever so they sit in their refugee camp without a

country and without support which is why we are raising as much money as we can to support them Facebook claims that

they changed their practices since the massacre of 2017 but in 2022 just last year Global witness did an investigation

and they were able to place ads on Facebook that contained hateful messages in the Burmese language Facebook didn't

reject any of those ads whereas here in the United States or in Brazil Facebook seems to have real controls for hateful

ads but it appears not in Myanmar even after all this this story in some ways is specific to me Myanmar it's a country

that had been closed off to the world for a long time it opened up it was newly connected to the internet and soon

long-standing tensions between ethnic groups exploded but in other ways this is a story about humans everywhere about

how we've chosen to build our society around technology and social media platforms that are supposed to connect

us and they do and yet in the process we've learned just how much they also create division spread disinformation

and limit our ability to live in a shared reality it's a story about how that process that trade-off can have

deadly [Music] consequences

[Music]