Thread by @althecat

The US debate over Facebook regulation is mostly focused on the impact of dangerous, unmoderated hate speech inside the U.S. @SPP_FI raises important questions about global regulation of the hate speech giant.

Facebook’s Role in Destabilizing Ethiopia/HOA link.medium.com/gxu3Pwkj8jb

The rest of the developed world barely gets any attention from @Facebook let alone the developing world, where it is huge and plays a significantly greater role in political communications than it does in the west.

In NZ in 2019, a lone Australian gunman killed 51 people on a rampage through two mosques in Christchurch, where I went to school. His shooting spree was streamed live on Facebook on thousands of pages and groups. It was far and away the largest terror event ever in NZ.

After the event, which was clearly orchestrated to have maximum impact for its target audience of white supremacists in the West, the numbers of copies of the video stream online was over a million. And months later copies of the video remained online.

The event led to the Christchurch Call, an event held in Paris of 2019, at which NZ's PM @jacindaardern called for the elimination of violent extremist content online. christchurchcall.com

As @SPP_FI says, the issue of violent extremist online content is one that is very real in Ethiopia. Decades of TPLF rule in which pitting ethnic groups against each other was part of the power control strategy has left deep scars.

I've seen numerous examples of violent extremist content since I have been following the crisis in Ethiopia - mostly on @Facebook. Much of this ontent is directed against Amhara by OLA and TPLF violent extremists both of which fit a definition of violent extremist movements.

Developing nations have almost no resources dedicated to moderation of content. Resources in rich western nations are also completely inadequate, but I doubt there is much expectation of moderation requests being addressed in Ethiopia.
I'd be interested to hear accounts of this.

Myanmar and the attacks on the Rohingya muslims are the poster child for @Facebook driven genocide, but the risk is much wider, and certainly very live in Africa and the Indian sub-continent.

Once the discussion reaches the point of actual regulation of @Facebook in the United States it is vital that the rest of the world is included in the design of regulations which address the objectives in the Christchurch Call.

/ENDS

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