Facebook apps are widespread virtually all over the world. However, we may all be better off if they weren’t.
The company’s most shameful human toll – its contribution to violence, human trafficking and abuse by authoritarian governments – has occurred chiefly in countries outside North America and Western Europe like India, Honduras, Myanmar, Ethiopia and also the Philippines.
What if Facebook backs away from the various countries where its social network and Instagram and WhatsApp apps have done severe harm, even if they have given voice to the voiceless?
Years of horrific headlines haven’t inspired Facebook to create steady progress in solving its issues.
Perhaps it’s time for the company to leave countries like Myanmar and Azerbaijan unless it devotes a constant level of money, attention and cultural competence to its presence in those places as it does in America and France. Dedicated to your presence. (And Facebook isn’t good in wealthy countries.)
I don’t blame those of you who suppose that an American like me is being moralist for suggesting that “Facebook broke democracy in several countries around the world,” as Filipino journalist Maria Russa said, the people of these places would be happier without the site.
But maybe we should all raise ourselves radical questions about the horrors of Facebook: is a better Facebook a realistic possibility, or is that the resolution a smaller Facebook?
And what if nobody could or should not operate the highly effective, lightning-fast communication system for billions of individuals in nearly every country?
There’s a deep irony in my suggestion that a less-global Facebook could be higher. The ability of individuals to use networks to express themselves, collaborate and challenge authority is more profound in places where establishments are weak or corrupt and where citizens don’t have a voice.
It’s also where Facebook has done the most damage and where the company and the world have paid the slightest attention.
Three years after the United Nations completed that Myanmar’s military had turned the social network into a propaganda tool for killing.
The Journal’s reporting prompt that Facebook repeated several constant mistakes and allowed it to happen again in Ethiopia.
The Journal noted that, as in Myanmar, Facebook workers and computerized systems couldn’t decipher the dialects of most posts that were encouraging violence against a persecuted ethnos, which the US Government called the target of ethnic cleansing told Ethiopians and Facebook workers are warning the company of the risk.
How often do we need to browse similar stories from Sri Lanka, Honduras or the Philippines before concluding that maybe Facebook can’t work in the places where folks are most vulnerable to online abuse?
Facebook says it devotes comprehensive resources outside its home country to identifying and removing accounts used to spread dangerous propaganda or otherwise mislead or hurt folks.
It’s exhausting to imagine Facebook retreating from the world by its choice; however, doing so wouldn’t be a ruinous financial hit for the company.
While it’s true that the bulk of Facebook users are placed outside America, Canada and Europe, two-thirds of Facebook’s revenue comes from those regions.
Similarly, Amazon generates ninety per cent of its revenue from simply four countries — America, Germany, United Kingdom and Japan — and a few believe its global concentration is holding it back.
Running a worldwide net company isn’t easy. However, it’s also tough to examine Facebook getting used as a tool for ethnic violence and severe abuse and acknowledge that it’s a defensive aspect of connecting the globe.
