Elsewhere

How Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Enabled Genocide in Myanmar


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What if a social media platform designed to connect people actually helped orchestrate genocide? In this episode, Tyler Cooper exposes how Facebook's reckless expansion into Myanmar created the perfect storm for ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya people.
This isn't just another tech horror story. It's a case study in what happens when Silicon Valley moves fast and breaks things in a country where "breaking things" means breaking lives.
🎯 What You'll Discover:
• How Myanmar exploded from 1% to 90% internet access in just four years, with Facebook as the gateway
• Why Facebook had only TWO Myanmar-language moderators for 54 million people during peak violence
• The exact tactics used to spread hate speech that drove 700,000 Rohingya from their homes
• What Facebook executives knew and when they knew it (spoiler: way earlier than they admitted)
👤 Perfect for: Anyone who thinks tech platforms are just neutral tools and wants to understand how digital decisions have deadly real-world consequences.
📍 Chapters:
[00:00] Tyler introduces Myanmar's digital transformation nightmare
[02:15] Facebook becomes the internet in Myanmar overnight
[04:30] The Rohingya crisis explodes across social media
[06:45] How hate speech algorithms actually work
[09:00] Facebook's internal documents reveal the truth
[11:30] What this means for social media regulation today
Cooper connects the dots between Myanmar's isolated past, Facebook's growth obsession, and a humanitarian disaster that the UN called "textbook ethnic cleansing." You'll understand not just what happened, but how it keeps happening everywhere platforms prioritize engagement over human safety.
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🔍 Topics: Facebook genocide Myanmar, Rohingya crisis social media, tech platform accountability, Myanmar internet expansion, content moderation failures

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Keywords: news breakdown, global politics, international podcast, current affairs, geopolitics explained

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ElsewhereBy Tyler Cooper