Facebook:Compensatory justice
The military in Myanmar finds its master in Zuckerberg.
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From Jannis Brühl
Facebook is a battle zone. So that the democratic demonstrators in Myanmar cannot network, the military in coups keeps turning off the internet. In this respect, there is something of compensatory justice that the junta finds its master in Facebook. The US network sided with the demonstrators and banished the military and its media. That took weeks, but there are probably learning effects. In 2017, when the military launched a brutal offensive against the Rohingya, Facebook was still serving as a water heater for hate propaganda.
Myanmar’s junta cannot invoke freedom of expression. They are the powerful, they have abused the network to use top-down violence. A brutal power with its own TV channels is not a critical voice that is unjustly silenced.
The case gives a foretaste of future conflicts: A company that doesn’t even have employees in the country intervenes directly in a conflict, the 36-year-old boss sits in California in front of seductive buttons. That should arouse desires. Because whether diplomats, presidents or NGOs: whoever has Mark Zuckerberg’s ear can have the regime muted. In the name of democracy – or whatever.
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