Facebook created country-specific community standards for the first time ahead of Myanmar's general election, and seemingly reduced hate speech and misinfo
sometimes damaging — of Western tech companies in the non-western world. Equally eager to see more work on the impact of Chinese tech companies in the non-Western world. In short, a non-Western centric narrative. https://twitter.com/... @restofworld : After Facebook was widely criticized for allowing misinformation to run rampant in Myanmar, the company tried a new approach: create country-specific rules. It's the first time Facebook has customized its global “Community Standards” https://restofworld.org/... Jason Koebler / @jason_koebler : Facebook decided to not allow genocide stuff in Myanmar what a concept https://restofworld.org/...
Rest of WorldPeter Guest
Context & Ripple Effects
Myanmar is the country where Facebook's one-size-fits-all moderation failed most visibly: the service became synonymous with the internet itself in a newly democratic Myanmar, leaned on civil society groups to police rumors, and its own commissioned report found it wasn't doing enough to stop the platform being used to incite offline violence (the 2018 report). After that came years of consultation — meetings with academics and NGOs from Myanmar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and elsewhere on region-specific policies.
The change reported here is structural rather than cosmetic: for the first time Facebook has forked its global Community Standards into country-specific rules, timed to Myanmar's general election, with hate speech and misinformation reportedly declining as a result.
First-order effects
Myanmar users and election-period content are now judged against locally tailored rules instead of global ones — the first time Facebook's enforcement baseline varies by country.
Civil society groups that had been de facto outsourced moderators gain formal policy channels, after years of informal reliance documented in the earlier coverage.
Second-order effects
Countries where Facebook faced similar criticism — the Philippines and Sri Lanka were both part of the same consultation round — become the obvious next candidates for their own rule sets, turning 'global Community Standards' into a tiered product.
Rival platforms operating in the same markets now face pressure to justify why their rules remain uniform where Facebook's are localized.
Third-order effects
If localization becomes standard practice, platform governance shifts from a single global speech regime toward negotiated, per-country rulebooks — raising hard questions about who sets each country's red lines, and how much local governments influence them.
The Myanmar arc — blame, research teams, commissioned reports, then bespoke rules — becomes the template other platforms cite when defending their non-Western operations.
The trend: Global platforms are moving from uniform worldwide content rules to country-specific governance, with Myanmar serving as the test case that defines the model.
Maybe one set of Community Standards for the *whole world* isn't a great strategy after all In Myanmar, Facebook created country-specific rules for the first time, and it seemed to work. Great story from @PeterGuest https://restofworld.org/...
Great to see articles, publications that focus on the impact — sometimes damaging — of Western tech companies in the non-western world. Equally eager to see more work on the impact of Chinese tech companies in the non-Western world. In short, a non-Western centric narrative. http…
After Facebook was widely criticized for allowing misinformation to run rampant in Myanmar, the company tried a new approach: create country-specific rules. It's the first time Facebook has customized its global “Community Standards” https://restofworld.org/...
https://restofworld.org/... “Is this a sign of a new level of consistent support and focus from Facebook, or is it like a SWAT team that they put in, and now ... the SWAT team is going to leave again, and we're back to where we were before.”
Facebook's Q3 content moderation report showed major improvements over last quarter, as some moderators returned to the office. These new stats only help build moderators' case that they're core to Facebook and ought to be more than contractors https://www.protocol.com/...
The Indian government sent the highest ever user data requests to Facebook, second only to the US, in the first six months of 2020, the social media giant said in its biannual transparency report released on November 19. 1/7
@Reuters Update: Facebook released their biannual transparency report on Friday. It showed they censored 834 posts in Vietnam upon gov't request in the first half of 2020. 14 profiles were removed “in error”, the report says. https://twitter.com/...
Lack of transparency reduces the value of FB transparency reports. Statements like “automation removed 95% of the hate speech that was removed” elide FB's willingness to permit significant amounts of hate speech. https://twitter.com/...
While other social media companies have implemented aggressive new polices to combat the spread of disinformation on their platforms, Facebook has failed to do the same. Today @RepKatiePorter and I wrote to @Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding a more rigorous response. https:/…
Last year @PeterDutton_MP said right-wing extremists were “on the dark web.” In reality, they are also hiding in plain sight, on platforms like Facebook, spreading hate speech & propaganda. It's a growing threat the Morrison Govt must take seriously. https://www.reuters.com/...
Facebook says Artificial Intelligence detects 94.7% of hate speech removed from platform. Facebook needs to shut it's operation today and open at a later time. Militia groups and Hate groups congregate on Facebook to set meetings! https://www.cnbc.com/...
These numbers on now many pieces of misinformation Facebook labelled seem impressive, but they miss is the gargantuan effort from fact-checkers working in overdrive all year. It's not just the company's achievement. https://www.engadget.com/...
What's fascinating about this report is that their data points are p meaningless. Facebook's definition of hate speech is extremely narrow and their enforcement of policies are inconsistent. The issue isn't just speed it's that they don't consider a lot of hate to be hate speech.…
In 2020Q3, hate speech prevalence was 0.10-0.11%. Our work aims to minimize the prevalence of hate speech, while also reducing mistakes we make when removing content. More details on our work on hate speech here: https://about.fb.com/... (6/7)
CTO Mike Schroepfer commends the development of FB's AI in catching 95% of hate speech before it's reported. In '17, he said it was around 25%. Remember that the co's moderators wrote a letter yesterday saying FB's AI isn't as good as ppl think it is https://twitter.com/...
Credit where it's due: people have been calling for Facebook to release prevalence stats (the ‘but how much did you MISS?’ question) for a long time. Yes, there's still many more qs (auditing; breakdown by country/affected communities/seriousness) but this is a big step forward h…