A mobile phone screen after the Sri Lankan government decided to shut down social messaging networks including Facebook, Colombo, Sri Lanka, March 7, 2018. Yanghee Lee, a U.N. official charged with investigating events in the country, has said that Facebook’s overwhelming popularity in Burma makes it a key factor in the spread of hate speech. “We don’t allow hate speech and incitement to violence on Facebook,” a company spokesperson told me. So what sort of moral responsibility does the company bear for its role as a delivery vehicle for speech, destructive and otherwise? Government officials ultimately resorted to temporarily blocking access to platforms including Facebook and WhatsApp in an effort to stop the bloodshed.

Source: Washington Post March 22, 2018 14:15 UTC