Thread by @slpng_giants

THREAD: This article is a must-read. Not only does it show that hate via social media can fuel and perhaps ignite real world violence and even genocide, it proves that @facebook and other social media companies really have no idea how to control it. reuters.com/investigates/s…

The reason why we, and other individuals and groups, have been pleading with social media companies to clean up the bigotry on their platform is proven out in Myanmar, where hate on @facebook has reached epidemic levels, feeding into the genocide of the Rohingya people.

The language used is a mirror image of what you’d see here on @facebook @Twitter @disqus and even @foxnews in reference to immigrants and Muslims. This would be bad enough without the fact that, like here, the social media giant doesn’t really know how to combat it.

The one consistent thread through the leadership in all social media companies is that they prefer to be hands-off, that their platforms were supposed to be a public square for discussion, ignoring the idea that there might be those that use them for nefarious purposes.

You saw it with @facebook & @YouTube doing backflips to keep from having to dump Alex Jones for harassment and incitement and you’re still seeing it with @jack and @Twitter, the last holdout in this pie-in-the-sky view of social media, defending the indefensible with Jones.

But what is truly terrifying is that all of these companies are built for the ideal world, not the real one. If something happens, whether it’s a wave of hate and genocide in Myanmar or Russian election meddling in the US, they are completely ill-equipped to handle it.

These companies are more than happy to sit back and collect the checks, but struggle mightily to accept the fact that they continue to create enormous damage in the world. They are getting played and that interferes with their utopian vision for their platforms.

It is going to be a tough pill to swallow, but they all need to admit that they are fallible. Elections are being influenced, people are being intimidated and harassed and, yes, groups of people like the Rohingya are being slaughtered with their help.

The time has come for platforms to take a real stand on hate and sexism and harassment holistically and that’s only going to happen from the inside of these companies or from the outside, when advertisers, their patrons, decide its enough and force the issue.

In the meantime, we’ll keep bothering the crap out of them.

Hope you’ll join us.