A Look At How Facebook Is Being Used To Ferment Unrest And Violence In Countries With Sectarian Tensions

Photo: A false Facebook claim: “23,000 sterilization pills caught in Ampara. Thank you to the police. Muslim pharmacy owner from Akkaraipattu arrested. Who wants to sterilize the Sinhalese?” Credit Amanda Taub/The New York Times

New York Times: Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match

False rumors set Buddhist against Muslim in Sri Lanka, the most recent in a global spate of violence fanned by social media.

MEDAMAHANUWARA, Sri Lanka — Past the end of a remote mountain road, down a rutted dirt track, in a concrete house that lacked running water but bristled with smartphones, 13 members of an extended family were glued to Facebook. And they were furious.

A family member, a truck driver, had died after a beating the month before. It was a traffic dispute that had turned violent, the authorities said. But on Facebook, rumors swirled that his assailants were part of a Muslim plot to wipe out the country’s Buddhist majority.

“We don’t want to look at it because it’s so painful,” H.M. Lal, a cousin of the victim, said as family members nodded. “But in our hearts there is a desire for revenge that has built.”

The rumors, they believed, were true. Still, the family, which is Buddhist, did not join in when Sinhalese-language Facebook groups, goaded on by extremists with wide followings on the platform, planned attacks on Muslims, burning a man to death.

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WNU Editor: Rumors and lies .... like everything else .... will always spread on social media sites like Facebook. But what happens when technology can make even the rumors and lies look real and truthful? Case in point .... AI Software FakeApp Forces Obama to Call Trump 'Total Dipsh*t' (Sputnik).