Facebook: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

[Music] our main story tonight concerns Facebook the worst place to wish happy birthday to a friend other than a funeral now Facebook has been in the news a lot recently over concerns about everything from privacy to fake news to Russian trolls but tonight we're actually going to go in a different direction and focus on his behavior overseas because Facebook has been expanding aggressively abroad more than half its revenue come from outside the US and eighty percent of its users now live in foreign countries posting things like this yes that is that's an international version of the in my feelings challenge the thing that took Facebook and Instagram by storm after being popularized by the Shiggy show and you can learn more about all of that in my new book I don't know what any of these words mean but my staff assures me it makes sense for years Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg pushed his utopian idea that all connections are good connections with feel-good ads showing him bringing the Internet to the world and Facebook employees proudly saying things like this by connecting the world people realize that there are other people in the world who have different lives in them and that maybe their lives could be better and then amazing things happen you want to do something big and you have this access to you know 1.2 billion people what can you do is just limited by your imagination look connecting billions of people does sound great but it's also important to remember that when it comes to the Internet a certain number of those people are then going to say Jews control sharks who did 9/11 and you really have to think that through unfortunately thinking things through has never really been Facebook strong point there early motto was famously move fast and break things a sentiment which Zuckerberg has explained this way we want to build our culture and our infrastructure so that we just try to move you know one or two clicks faster than than other companies and you know sometimes we go too fast and we mess up a bunch of stuff and then we have to fix it and that's cool is that cool is that cool at all mark because that seems like maybe the most reckless corporate motto since the hindenburg companies fly fast and smokes and a big bag of hydrogen how did you not foresee the problems that were heading your way and make no mistake Facebook has broken things overseas sometimes they were small for instance over the summer there was an earthquake in Indonesia and while Facebook undeniably connected people there it wasn't necessarily in the way the situation demanded as this international news report shows normally Facebook sends the balloon and the confetti animations to users wishing each other well however the Indonesian work for congratulations selamat can also mean unheard or to survive so when Facebook users posted messages saying I hope people will survive Facebook give them celebratory animations yeah that's not ideal is it because there's a time and a place for balloons and it's very rarely after the word survived in fact let me prove that to you I have some terrible news we may have to eat each other to survive no no that's the worst time for that and look look if if embarrassing mistranslations were the only problems that Facebook had that would be one thing but the company has made some hugely consequential mistakes overseas and that is what tonight's story is about in the Philippines and Cambodia Facebook has been accused of empowering authoritarians in Sri Lanka India and Indonesia viral rumors and hateful comments on Facebook have been linked to outbreaks of deadly violence but for the worst distillation of what Facebook can do to a country just look at Myanmar the country who thinks so little about you didn't even realize that's not Myanmar that's Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark this is Myanmar now Myanmar also known as Burma was for decades cut off from the world under military dictatorships but in recent years as its transition to a quasi civilian government internet use there especially a Facebook has exploded in 2013 just over 1 percent of citizens had internet access but now 18 million people are on Facebook thanks in part to becoming pre-installed on mobile phones and heavy promotion by service providers who didn't charge Facebook usage against data plans yeah we can use Facebook for free except for looking at photos and watching videos everything is free we'll use Facebook for free and ask the things we want to know I'll use empty tea and post everything to Facebook it's free let's use Facebook for free with MPC ok just quick question is Facebook free cuz I'm worried that commercial didn't quite make it clear so with Facebook's so easy to access it basically became the internet so much so that people in Myanmar use the terms internet and Facebook interchangeably and look some people there use Facebook for fun that guy you saw earlier lives in Myanmar while other people find it to be a complete waste of time like this irritating teacher everybody said easy it's my phone playing games I hate I hate I don't like it's a terrible look likes boys Facebook is a toilet find it okay I get that he's annoyed but calling Facebook a toilet is a little unfair to toilets because they make go away whereas Facebook retains disseminate to your acquaintances and reminds you of from seven years ago or what allow the corporation's to put their in front of you what I'm saying is there is a purity and integrity to toilets that Facebook seriously lacks but Facebook's issues in Myanmar go well beyond distracted teenagers because if you have glanced at the not Trump section of the newspaper at all recently you are probably aware that Myanmar is a majority Buddhist country with a long history of religious and ethnic tensions particularly with regard to the row hinge er a mostly Muslim group in the western part of Myanmar in 2017 and military executed a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing so far about seven hundred and twenty-five thousand role hinge about three-quarters of the population have fled to Bangladesh to escape government troops one estimate puts the death toll conservatively at around 10,000 people and to be clear Facebook didn't cause that I feel comfortable saying it Mark Zuckerberg not guilty genocide in Myanmar as of this taping but but and it is a big but by all accounts Facebook absolutely did inflamed pre-existing tensions there in fact a report on Myanmar prepared by independent UN investigators said Facebook has been a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate and it is weird to hear something that started out as frivolous be described like that it's like if five years from now you and investigators called bubble tea and aggressive threat to human rights holy I mean honestly I never really liked it but Jesus Christ but hate speech against Muslims and especially the row hinge er flourished on Facebook posted by military leaders and politicians as well as prominent Buddhist monks like Ashton were are - - Muslims have a place here in Burma we can't repeat his actual response its r-rated but essentially he said Muslims were defecating on Burma threatening its very existence you don't like them very much mahjongg i don't accept them why did i because they're deceiving the world they want to take over the whole country that monk is so hateful he has actually been called the Burmese bin Laden that's right a Buddhist monk is known as the Burmese bin Laden which is as jarring as if you found out there's a Care Bear known as the one who because to be honest I always thought wish bear would be the one who I mean look at him that Beth Fox lerato had hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook and he uses pages to wreak havoc including spreading false accusations that a Muslim business owner had raped a buddhist employee a post that helped instigate riots in the city of mandalay in 2014 in which two people were killed and around 20 others injured and yet despite repeated warnings about where our to facebook didn't get around to banning him until earlier this year and that is just one example of the extent to which facebook became an echo chamber of Islamophobia one local official told reporters he was proud to oversee a Muslim free village even though he admitted he had never even met a Muslim before adding I have to thank Facebook because it is giving me the true information in Myanmar and here is what happened when ABC talked to people in the streets there most local people here get their news via Facebook and judging by what people have told us they are not getting the whole picture what do you think about the I think they are terrorists they are extra they're making problems everything I could gather information from Facebook what does Facebook say they want to occupy our land and our people that is very very dangerous because no one should be judged by the worst things people say about them on Facebook if I were judge by that you'd think I was a cuck twit a prime example of why abortion should be more readily available and that I look like a distressed bird in a pet shop trying desperately to get your attention and I ask you is any of that apart from that last one really fair I would say no I would argue not so so how the did so much hate speech and violence inciting content stay up for so long because it's not like Facebook doesn't have rules they have a lot of them their own internal materials get into details like which sort of anuses photoshopped onto faces they're willing to allow this is true they even cite graphic examples such as this image of Trump with an anus for a mouth that is apparently allowed by the way because he is a public figure Taylor Swift with anuses for eyes also allowed for the same reason but this image of kim jeong-hoon with an anus for a mouth is apparently not okay because i quote it also displays a sex toy inserted into the anus but that still leaves gray areas doesn't it for instance what if I display a meatball sub being inserted into that same mouth anus is a meatball sub a sex toy could you not argue that meatballs are the anal beads of Italy and by the way Olive Garden that slogan is free for you to use look you can have it it's yours look you can quibble you can absolutely quibble with where Facebook draws its lines and the broader discussion of private companies policing speech is an important one but the point is Facebook does have standards that are enforced in a number of ways they have artificial intelligence that automatically detects some objectionable content and removes it they also rely on users like you and me to flag objectionable content which is then reviewed by human moderators it's something most social media companies do and it is a thankless job as you can see from this training session run by a Content moderation company in India here the person is not naked but you can see their exxor shape is visible now this lady's now here it's very much obvious that intensely sees focusing on but part the camera is focusing on but part it will fall under nudity it's not proper nudity but it will fall under nudity I'm sorry I'm absolutely calling it that guy is definitely focusing on the buttocks but as Facebook themselves will tell you policing nudity is the easy part what's harder is defining and spotting misinformation hate speech and that is what Myanmar has been drowning in and Facebook system failed them at every stage first their a I didn't work because Facebook's technology isn't compatible with me amaz language fonts which you know not great but fine that just meant that they badly needed Burmese people to flag content for them but to do that it really might have helped if things like their community standards and reporting systems had been in Burmese which they weren't until late 2015 which isn't great in the country where almost no one speaks English just imagine if Facebook Facebook's interface here was in Burmese you would have no way of knowing which button did what in fact that's not even Facebook's interface that's just a list of dinosaurs ranked from most to least and by the way Stegosaurus is way too far down on that list Stella Soros is basically the wish bear of dinosaurs seriously that bear can get it but but wait wait because it gets worse even content that did get flagged in Myanmar often didn't get taken down and one reason with that may be that Facebook had shockingly few Burmese speaking content reviewers how many you know I'll just let this Reuters reporter tell you back in 2014 they had one person they hired a second in early 2015 they out sourced an operation they'd been doing that for a while but they had had no burmese speakers at all until 2015 when they hired - it's true first they had one then they doubled it to two and through outsourcing added two more so full and I don't know what the exact right number of Burmese speakers for Facebook is but it probably shouldn't be possible for the sum total of them to be decimated in a tandem bike accident and it's not like Facebook can plead ignorance or surprise about any of this multiple civil society groups and individuals try to warn them as far back as 2013 five years ago that they face trouble in Myanmar and Facebook itself now admits that they move too slowly though Zuckerberg insists that they're now making progress they've hired 60 burmese speakers me recently told members of congress that they're looking for more we're hiring dozens of more Burmese language content reviewers because hate speech is very language specific it's hard to do it without people who speak the local language and we need to ramp up our effort there dramatically hate speech is language specific it's a little weird to hear a guy who's been universally lauded as a genius and a visionary say something that's completely obvious as if it's a brand new idea to him it's as if Steve Jobs called everyone together for his brand new discovery mrs. Doubtfire was just the dad in a costume yeah we know Steve did you not get that I thought you were smart I don't trust my iPhone now but for all his reassuring words many argue that Zuckerberg still hasn't done nearly enough hate speech is still widespread on Facebook in Myanmar last month four months after Zuckerberg promised to do better Reuters found more than a thousand Burmese language posts attacking the row hinge ER and other Muslims that were still on Facebook and short you could say well come on Reuters was actively looking for those but you know who else could do that maybe a company worth 500 billion dollars Reuters doesn't have 500 billion dollars their journalist doesn't even seem to have a decent webcam get the man a decent webcam Reuters his work is important and despite its 60 hole Burmese speakers Facebook is still struggling with the language there in fact earlier this year there community standards were so badly missed translated into Burmese that instead of saying we take our role in keeping abuse of our service seriously they said we take our role seriously by abusing our services and small things like that really matter even punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence for example and this is true Bill Cosby once wrote a book that I'm guessing was meant to be called come on people but they admitted the comma so it read come on people and deep down perhaps that's when we should have known and look look I am NOT saying that the challenges Facebook is facing and not significant but for a company that moves fast and break things they have sure moved slowly in trying to fix them and until they do it is painfully obvious that everyone should be treating anything on their site with extreme skepticism and see Facebook for what it actually is a fetid swamp of mistruths and outright lies interspersed with the occasional reminder of a dead pet that's it that's what it is so instead of producing idyllic ads about connecting the world at the very very least Facebook should be producing ads that prepare countries for how to deal with their product Oh suggest something like this hi we're Facebook we're connecting the world and we're coming to your country whether you like it or not so there's one thing about Facebook you should probably know somewhere between eighty and a hundred percent of what's on our site is complete my Facebook page is full of lies about how happy I am my Facebook page say I go to yoga I'll be like three times my Facebook page says I'm a 19 year old girl all my photos are of me we are baby but I don't have baby fun we at Facebook believe in giving everyone a voice without worrying too much about what that voice then chooses to say I mean how bad could it be I don't believe the Holocaust happened Oh yikes can someone please explain to me why what Charlie Rose did was so wrong I wouldn't post that but you can George Soros invented mosquitoes Hillary Clinton created aids yeah I'm sure about that there is only one old cent winner moving back and forth very fast look it's not our place to tell you you're wrong we're about making connections can you connect me to my brother sure can you connect me to coca-cola oh we can absolutely do that but I gotta admit I'm an animal a go-getter matter I mean familiar I'm not sure what you just said but it sounded great the point is Facebook is a platform anyone can use to do good or bad it's riddled with and quite honestly we're never gonna be able to control or contain it so before you use our site for the first time there's something you badly need to remember Facebook is full of Facebook is full of we spoke with John see Tom to base boogie no mirrors por nada first movie John said mom Facebook are the rust disgusting got a lily left of this book in a posh way they like karma so in my team Bunton ah coilette Facebook outlook on junk Facebook's our toilet and God willing your country will survive it sure we've really gotta fix that Facebook we're toilet [Laughter] [Applause]

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 8,315,455

Keywords: last week tonight facebook, john oliver facebook, facebook

Id: OjPYmEZxACM

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 23 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/mojambowhatisthescen]

Most Pakistanis (especially my parents' generation) also use Facebook religiously, believing whatever they read, and spreading it to as many people as possible via Facebook and Whatsapp.

It would stop at being mildly irritating if a lot of the 'news' being spread wasn't incredibly dangerous. Everything from religious and sectarian propaganda, xenophobia, homophobia, and even false blasphemy accusations (sometimes leading to mob attacks) go viral regularly. It's really fucking dangerous, and people just don't seem to take responsibility for spreading this shit.

However, I don't really blame Facebook for these users' actions. People need to do better, or one medium will just be replaced with another. I do try educating people close to me about their responsibility for the 'news' they spread. But we need much more efficient mechanisms to spread that message to make any sort of dent in this awful trend.

[u/spidd124]

Mirrors for those who need them pt1 pt2

[u/Papasmurphsjunk]

Much of what is said in this segement is equally true of Reddit. There is loud echo chambers of hate speech, misogyny, propaganda, and astroturfing all over the place that Reddit admins have no interest in policing. Think for yourself when reading anything on this site and try to hold Reddit admins to the same standard we are trying to hold Facebook too.

[u/TheTrueMilo]

If anyone remembers from the Rwandan Genocide, there were radio stations broadcasting hate speech and dehumanizing speech toward the Tutsi that were deemed culpable for a substantial number of Tutsi deaths.

[u/No-YouShutUp]

Sort of felt like they put too much blame on Facebook for Myanmar. Like the leadership of the country was speaking like a bunch of hate filled nazis, doesn’t that make their platform less relevant?

No one blamed radios and tv for hitler but it sure helped get his message out

[u/BoogsterSU2]

Facebook - We're A Toilet!

​

Also, please deactivate your Facebook account right now. You don't fucking need it anymore!

[u/ennuinerdog]

Anybody got a mirror for us Aussies?

[u/Nerkata]

I'm not quite sure how to feel about this segment. It was funny, was able to transport the message that Facebook definitely needs to do more but it completely left out important questions about the situation in Myanmar and other countries where Facebook is used as the main source of news.

Basically we need a discussion about censorship. And let's be realistic for a second. It's a blast to make fun of "the ZUCK" and Facebook, but who really thinks another company would've solved the situation in a better way. Facebook in this instance is a tool, not the main reason there was/is a genocide in Myanmar. What about TV? What about Radio? What about other messenger services?

And where should Facebook draw the line? When should they intervene? And how should they counter state-sponsored propaganda?

Furthermore I completely missed the positive changes Facebook brought us. We are able to organize faster, connect with old friends and long forgotten family and - as the arab spring showed us - oppressive regimes can be overthrown by it.

All in all this was one of the few segments of Last Week Tonight where I felt like they had very little substance and only took a very superficial look at the topic.

[u/super_jeenyus]

Well, I won't be looking at meatballs the same way now. Thanks John!