Facebook announce that they have banned 20 individuals and organizations from Facebook in Myanmar — including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the military’s Myawady television network.
"The ethnic violence in Myanmar has been truly horrific. Earlier this month, we shared an update on the steps we’re taking to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation on Facebook. While we were too slow to act, we’re now making progress – with better technology to identify hate speech, improved reporting tools, and more people to review content," Facebook said in a statement.
Today, they are taking more action in Myanmar, removing a total of 18 Facebook accounts, one Instagram account and 52 Facebook Pages, followed by almost 12 million people.
Specifically, they are banning International experts, most recently in a report by the UN Human Rights Council-authorized Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, have found evidence that many of these individuals and organizations committed or enabled serious human rights abuses in the country.
Facebook aims to prevent them from using their service to further inflame ethnic and religious tensions.
Additionally, they have removed 46 Pages and 12 accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook. During a recent investigation, they discovered that they used seemingly independent news and opinion Pages to covertly push the messages of the Myanmar military.
