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Credit to Author: Louise Matsakis| Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2019 18:10:21 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n After a series of bombings<\/a> killed over 300 people<\/a> in Sri Lanka Easter Sunday, the country\u2019s government blocked access<\/a> to social media sites including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and the chat app Viber, according to state media and independent organizations<\/a> that monitor internet blocks. A number of tech commentators, from The New York Times<\/a><\/em> to The Guardian<\/em><\/a>, quickly expressed support for Sri Lanka\u2019s decision, citing it as evidence that Facebook has failed to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech in the country and elsewhere.<\/p>\n But civil rights experts and researchers within Sri Lanka worry that the practice of shutting down entire swaths of the internet\u2014which has become increasingly common<\/a> around the world\u2014can do more harm than good.<\/p>\n \u201cCurbing civil liberties and civil rights doesn\u2019t make people more safe,\u201d says Allie Funk, a research analyst at the nonprofit Freedom House, which publishes annual country reports on internet freedom. \u201cThese are societal issues that are going to take long-term solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s little doubt that misinformation circulating on sites like WhatsApp and Facebook has helped stoke violence in countries like Sri Lanka<\/a>, but in the aftermath of the attacks, local reporters and researchers warned<\/a> international journalists not to draw overly quick conclusions about Facebook\u2019s role in the violence. Sri Lanka is a country, after all, with a complex and recent history of civil war that predates the introduction of Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s invention there. Internet penetration remains low<\/a>, and experts have noted that much of the hateful rhetoric continues to circulate the old-fashioned way: through word of mouth<\/a>.<\/p>\n And yet, having access to sites like Facebook can be critical during the aftermath of an emergency. \u201cMany in Sri Lanka rely on social media platforms and messaging apps to reach out to their families,\u201d Berhan Taye, a campaigner at the digital rights nonprofit Access Now, wrote in a blog post<\/a>. \u201cFor those in danger, and for those who want to help, not being able to connect or confirm that a loved one is safe can be devastating.\u201d Taye noted that during a January terrorist attack in Kenya, victims similarly used platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook to communicate vital information<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the lack of official information sources and clear-cut channels of communication, social media was the only way for people to properly keep in touch and spread news.\u201d<\/p>\n Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, LIRNEasia<\/p>\n Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, a Sri Lankan researcher at the technology think tank LIRNEasia, said that Facebook\u2019s Safety Check<\/a> feature helped people quickly discover whether their friends and family were okay after Sunday\u2019s bombings. He notes that fake news did also begin to spread, but not solely due to Facebook\u2019s shortcomings. Official information disseminated by the government was haphazard, and traditional media outlets in Sri Lanka, like newspapers, are not always accurate due to government censorship. (Reporters Without Borders has consistently ranked<\/a> Sri Lanka in the bottom half of its annual World Press Freedom Index.)<\/p>\n \u201cWith the lack of official information sources and clear-cut channels of communication, social media kind of was the only way for people to properly keep in touch and spread news,\u201d says Wijeratne. \u201cAnd then it became a double-edged sword afterward<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Restricting access to social media can also make it harder for Sri Lankans to see valuable independent news stories shared online. \u201cDigital media remains a greater space of freedom than more traditional media in the country,\u201d says Funk, who edited Freedom House\u2019s report on internet freedom in Sri Lanka. In 2018, the organization rated<\/a> Sri Lanka\u2019s internet as only \u201cpartly free\u201d as a result of government censorship and limited access.<\/p>\n With the Sri Lankan government, experts warn, there\u2019s danger in Facebook becoming a scapegoat for longstanding tensions between ethnic and religious groups. Just ten years ago, the country ended a decades-long civil war between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil populations. \u201cSuccessive governments in Sri Lanka have flagged Facebook and social media as the sole or primary progenitors of violence, ignoring the fact that government itself has done little to uphold the Rule of Law or address the root causes,\u201d Sri Lankan researcher Sanjana Hattotuwa wrote in a policy brief<\/a> for the nonpartisan Toda Peace Institute last year, after the government blocked access<\/a> to social media sites following anti-Muslim riots in the country.<\/p>\n These blocks aren\u2019t always effective in stamping out misinformation, either. Thanks to the rise of virtual private networks<\/a>, which can circumvent bans within an individual country, Sri Lankan people can find their way around the government shutdown. WIRED spoke with a woman who lives just outside of the capital city Colombo, and who used a VPN to continue accessing Facebook and WhatsApp uninterrupted after the attacks.<\/p>\n The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said that even after the shutdown, she continued to receive misleading reports from friends on social media. One message included a news report about a man who had been arrested in connection with the attacks, but on further inspection, it turned out the story was several years old. Another report, which was circulating Monday afternoon, suggested that the water supply in the country had been poisoned, a rumor national officials have since debunked.<\/p>\n Still, the woman said she believes the social media block may be more effective in rural parts of the country. \u201cPeople who are using social networks in rural areas might not be going to the extent of using VPNs,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s still misinformation, but I think it must be reduced to a certain extent.\u201d<\/p>\n Multiple countries have passed laws in response to online misinformation<\/a> and hate speech<\/a> in recent years, which critics say can also be used to silence political opponents and mask dissent. Internet authoritarianism more broadly is on the rise<\/a>, and has been for years. What\u2019s perhaps most concerning is the emerging evidence that internet shutdowns can help incite more<\/em> violence. One working paper<\/a> published in February by Jan Rydzak, a researcher at Stanford\u2019s Digital Policy Incubator, looked at the effects of internet shutdowns in India. The research suggested that information blackouts \u201ccompel participants in collective action in India to substitute non-violent tactics for violent ones that are less reliant on effective communication and coordination.\u201d<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean Facebook shouldn\u2019t do more to stop the proliferation of fake news and hate speech in countries like Sri Lanka. There\u2019s ample evidence that the company prioritized growth around the world<\/a>, without putting the necessary safeguards in place to monitor its platform once it entered new regions. Of course, it\u2019s not a simple problem to solve. In Sri Lanka alone, the Sinhalese language has four different versions. Algorithms that Facebook has designed to detect hate speech in English don\u2019t necessarily map to that linguistic structure, says Wijeratne.<\/p>\n \u201cTeams from across Facebook have been working to support first responders and law enforcement as well as to identify and remove content which violates our standards,\u201d Facebook spokesperson Jen Ridings said in part in a statement.<\/p>\n It may be easy to applaud when a government like Sri Lanka's pushes back against a company historically hellbent on taking over the world with little concern for the consequences. But its chosen method of doing so\u2014completely restricting access during a time of crisis\u2014should be cause for concern.<\/p>\n