Facebook suspends accounts of Rohingya activists
According to the Daily Beast reports Facebook is removing posts and activists who are documenting the “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and also suspending their accounts. The activists said their accounts are frequently being taken down and it is hoped that the social media giant would let them speak the truth. Where Myanmar considers the Rohingyas illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, Bangladesh considers them Myanmar citizens. The Myanmar government does not use the term “Rohingya” and does not discern the people as an official ethnicity, which means they are denied citizenship and effectively rendered stateless.
On Wednesday, Facebook spokesperson Ruchika Budhraja told Daily Beast “We want Facebook to be a place where people can share responsibly and we work hard to strike the right balance between enabling expression while providing a safe and respectful experience”. Budhraja further added “In response to the situation in Myanmar, we are carefully reviewing content against our Community Standards”.
Besides repeatedly crippling his account, an activist name Rahim said, Facebook has also removed individual posts he put on the site about Rohingya refugees. “We removed this content because it doesn’t follow the Facebook Community Standards,” message read from Facebook. There are many such examples being reported across Myanmar.
After courting disputation for enabling Russia-controlled accounts to buy ads before the 2016 US presidential election, it has now come to light that Facebook also enabled advertisers to reach “Jew haters” until this week.
Facebook enabled the advertisers for 2,300 people to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater”, “How to burn jews” or “History of why jews ruin the world”, a ProPublica investigation has revealed. After revealing that fake Russian accounts bought nearly $100,000 of political ads during the 2016 US presidential election campaign on its platform, Facebook has handed over more details to American Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
By: Aviral Nigam