Meta propagated hate in Ethiopia – Amnesty

According to Amnesty International, Facebook has violated the human rights of thousands of Ethiopians.

Human rights organisation Amnesty International said on Tuesday that Facebook contributed to the bloodshed that took place during the two-year conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray area.

According to Amnesty, the social media platform’s algorithms “supercharged the spread of harmful rhetoric.”

The US-based social network Meta was unable to stop the harmful content from spreading widely, which contributed to the rise in hate speech.

“The human rights organisation highlighted how Facebook’s algorithmic systems accelerated the dissemination of damaging discourse directed towards the Tigrayan community, while the platform’s content moderation systems were unable to identify and react suitably to such content.”

Amnesty claims that a civilian who was suspected of aiding an armed group died as a result of the platform’s inaction. Meareg Amare, a chemistry professor at a university in Tigray, was killed by a gang in November 2021 as a result of remarks made on Facebook.

“The Facebook posts said he was a supporter of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and accused him of stealing enormous quantities of money. They included his name, photo, place of employment, and home address. His family refuted these accusations, according to the organization’s findings.

Amnesty International has called Meta’s business model “data-hungry,” and it continues to pose a serious threat to human rights in conflict-affected countries.

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On the other hand, the group thinks that a large portion of Ethiopians trust Facebook and rely significantly on it for information.

Facebook has already dealt with situations when provocative statements targeting ethnic Tigrayans have been disseminated. A lawsuit is pending against Meta for neglecting to remove offensive content. The corporation faced legal action in 2021 due to the posting of content that incited violence during the Rohingya massacre in Myanmar.

Amnesty International has accused Meta of contributing to grave human rights breaches in Ethiopia once more and of failing to learn from its failures in Myanmar three years prior.

Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard asserted, “Three years after its staggering failures in Myanmar, Meta has once again – through its content-shaping algorithms and data-hungry business model – contributed to serious human rights abuses.”

The NGO’s investigation comprised going through Meta’s internal records from 2019 to 2022.

Since November 2020, the battle in northern Ethiopia has been more intense for two years. Following a string of attacks on Ethiopian military bases by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the Federal Government launched an offensive in retaliation. The battle came to an end in November 2022 when a peace deal was reached between the rebels from Tigray and the Ethiopian government.