Sri Lanka’s Challenge to Silicon Valley
Sri Lanka was hit by a well-coordinated and highly lethal terrorist attack on Easter Sunday. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the country made an unusual and unprecedented decision to shut down access to all social networks nationwide, a ban that was lifted only today.
In the name of national security, and to prevent the spread of false information while the government was investigating the attacks and trying to track down perpetrators, platforms like Facebook, Viber, and WhatsApp were off limits to nearly everyone for more than a week in the island country of 20 million. It’s not the first time the country has shut down social media: in 2018, in the wake of anti-Muslim mob violence spun up over Facebook and Twitter, the government blocked access to the platforms.
Big Tech’s response? A collective question mark.
For platforms that only several years ago were patting themselves on the back for their platforms’ power to democratize governments, and promote free speech development around the world, it’s a sign of the times that they are so willing to be silenced in the wake of important world events.
It’s also a sign that, disaster after disaster, incident after incident, and problem after problem, these companies still haven’t been able to formulate meaningful answers to the challenges that their open platforms are creating around the world. And they’re playing catch-up to a world that they know is increasingly dangerous for them.
When in doubt, censor it out
One of Facebook’s spokespeople told CNN: “We are aware of the government’s statement regarding the temporary blocking of social media platforms. People rely on our services to communicate with their loved ones and we are committed to maintaining our services and helping the community and the country during this tragic time.”
Twitter was even more blunt to BuzzFeed: “We have no comment and nothing to share”.
Kara Swisher’s New York Times column in the wake of the attack reported that Facebook was “working with Sri Lankan law enforcement and trying to remove content that violates its standards.”
As it stands, many social media platforms have formulaic standards and policies: removing bad actor plus removing bad content must equal a healthier platform. To that effect, in the immediate aftermath of an incident like this, this means Facebook dedicates special resources internally to police content in Sri Lanka and about Sri Lanka, and trying to root out any speech that violates its terms of service. It may add a few hours of someone’s time to update the company’s controversial master spreadsheet of hate groups. Longer term, it may also hire a few more people in its Indian offices to do better lobbying and public relations work in Sri Lanka.
But if tech companies want to get to the bottom of why their platforms are such potent tools for mayhem in times of crisis, they are going to have to have a much deeper understanding of the messy, thorny, non-quantifiable problems at the root of these crises.
Unfortunately, I don’t have faith that there was someone in a crisis room somewhere on Easter Sunday saying “gosh this is strange, that there is a terrorist attack on Christians in a country where the social tensions have always been between Buddhists and Hindus? What will the fact that there was an Islamist attack on Catholics do to change the way that all Sri Lankans interact on our platform? What will this mean for how Sri Lanka’s sizable diaspora in the Persian Gulf and in the West are engaging on our platform?”
So, in the wake of this newest test of social media platforms’ role in crisis, does anyone in Mountain View or Menlo Park come out of this experience with a more nuanced view of ethnic violence or South Asian politics? Instead of just getting better at flagging and excluding violent content, is there anyone that is spending time getting a better understanding of Sri Lanka’s history or appreciating how WhatsApp or Twitter can stoke ethnic tensions in Sri Lanka and the numerous other countries with fragile social conditions?
I’m afraid I already know the answer. I’m even more afraid that social media leaders will spend more time and effort trying to suppress speech rather than coming to terms with why their platforms are such potent vehicles for spreading hateful and violent content.
