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https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/meta-failure-contributed-to-abuses-against-tigray-ethiopia/>
"Meta, the parent company of Facebook, contributed to serious human rights
abuses against Ethiopia’s Tigrayan community, Amnesty International said in a
new report published today.
A death sentence for my father: Meta’s contribution to human rights abuses in
northern Ethiopia, shows how Meta has once again failed to adequately curb the
spread of content advocating hatred and violence, this time targeting Tigrayans
during the November 2020 to November 2022 armed conflict in northern Ethiopia.
Amnesty International has previously highlighted Meta’s contribution to human
rights violations against the Rohingya in Myanmar and warned against the
recurrence of these harms if Meta’s business model and content-shaping
algorithms were not fundamentally reformed.
“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. Even before the outbreak of the
conflict in northern Ethiopia, civil society organizations and human rights
experts repeatedly warned that Meta risked contributing to violence in the
country, and pleaded with the company to take meaningful action,” said Agnès
Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
“However, Meta ignored these warnings and did not take appropriate mitigation
measures, even after the conflict had broken out. As a result, Meta has again
contributed to serious human rights abuses, this time perpetrated against the
Tigrayan community.”
The Facebook platform is a major source of information for many Ethiopians and
is considered a trustworthy news source. Facebook’s algorithms fueled
devastating human rights impacts by amplifying harmful content targeting the
Tigrayan community across Facebook during the armed conflict."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
