Facebook's Cameroon problem: stop online hate stoking conflict

A video link posted on Facebook on June 20 showed a man cooking human body parts in a pot over a wood fire.

In Cameroon, the footage went viral. Some Facebook users said the man was a cannibal and that the video was shot in the country’s English-speaking west, where separatist insurgents are fighting to create a breakaway state.

Local websites quickly debunked this notion. The man in the video was not a separatist fighter or cannibal, and the body parts were not real. The clip was taken on a Nigerian film set and uploaded to Instagram on June 17 by make-up artist Hakeem Onilogbo, who uses the platform to showcase his work.

But the video’s rapid spread raises questions about Facebook’s ability to police millions of posts each day and crack down on hate speech in a country where internet use is rising fast, social media are used for political ends and the company has no permanent physical presence.

The day the link was posted on Facebook, a member of the government brought the video to the attention of international diplomats in the capital, Yaounde, via the WhatsApp messaging service, according to messages seen by Reuters.

Facebook said the video had not been reported by users and that it could not comment further on the clip. It was no longer available on the site by late October.

A senior Facebook official said tackling misinformation in Cameroon was a priority for the company, which acknowledges more needs to be done.

“We’re prioritising countries where we’ve already seen how quickly online rumours can fuel violence, such as Myanmar and Cameroon,” said Ebele Okobi, Director of Africa Public Policy at Facebook.

In Cameroon, Facebook has been used both to incite violence and to make threatening posts.

Facebook has no staff operating permanently in Cameroon and says it monitors the country from Britain and the United States. It has an Africa-focused team that frequently visits the region, and has partnered with NGOs and civil society in Cameroon in recent months to combat hate speech.

Facebook has removed pages and accounts related to the separatist conflict, and is working to slow the spread of kidnapping videos, the company said.

It declined to say how many people it had helping it in Cameroon, how much money it had so far invested or how many posts it had taken down.

Reuters found dozens of pages posted in recent months showing graphic images in Cameroon, some of which were months old.

One Facebook user on July 18 posted a picture of the decapitated body of a Cameroonian policeman lying in a gutter and said the image gave him joy.

The same day, separatist spokesman Ivo Tapang applauded the killing of two Cameroonian soldiers and linked to a website raising funds for guns, ammunition and grenade launchers. Tapang did not respond to requests for comment.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the company was unaware of the posts before Reuters pointed them out but that they were both removed after review. It is against Facebook rules to celebrate suffering or crowdfund for arms, she said.

Facebook has artificial intelligence that it uses globally to detect problematic posts. But in Cameroon, it does not have a consortium of fact-checking companies to monitor posts — as it does in the United States.

Leading civil society figures in Cameroon say Facebook needs more resources and faces an increasingly difficult task as internet use grows.

(Source)