Protesters demonstrating in support of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority in The Hague. Meanwhile Facebook approved all eight of our ads containing Burmese language hate speech for publication. Sem van der Wal/ANP/AFP via Getty Images

We’re not suggesting that paid-for content is the primary means by which hate speech is spread in Myanmar. Instead, we used the submission of adverts as a means of testing Facebook’s ability to detect hate speech without ourselves posting hate speech. It is reasonable to assume that Facebook would apply its hate speech detection systems to ads as well as to organic content given that the company says explicitly that ads violating its community standards (which include hate speech) are prohibited. Indeed, Facebook themselves have said that during elections in Myanmar they have removed political pages that violated their ad policy on hate speech.

We put our findings to Facebook in order to give them the opportunity to put their side of the story but did not receive a response from them.

Facebook and other social media platforms should treat the spread of hate and violence with the utmost urgency. As an immediate step, they must properly resource and publish what integrity and security systems exist for their platform in each country – making sure that people in all countries and languages are sufficiently protected from hate speech and violence online.

In places such as Myanmar where there is clear evidence that Facebook was used to incite real world harms that cost ten thousand people their lives, and hundreds of thousands their homes and livelihoods, and where the Rohingya face an ongoing heightened risk of violence and continued discrimination, the very minimum the platform should do is ensure it is not being used for future incitement, and provide remedy to victims. There are a number of ongoing cases which are attempting to require Facebook to do this, including:

• A complaint under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (OECD Guidelines) that alleges Facebook breached the OECD human rights guidelines. The complaint was submitted by Rohingya groups in refugee camps in Bangladesh to the Irish National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines and seeks remedy for refugees.  The Irish National Contact Point had three months to decide whether to take the case forward. That deadline passed today. Our investigation shows how Facebook hasn’t cleaned up its act, at least for paid-for content, and is still hugely vulnerable to illegal Burmese hate speech: the Irish National Contact Point should take up the case.
• Legal action in the US and UK that accuse Facebook of negligence that facilitated a genocide against the Rohingya for which compensation on behalf of the victims of more than $150 billion is sought.

But it’s not enough to rely on private litigation or to expect the companies to regulate themselves. Governments must step in and hold these companies to account, keep people safe and prevent human rights abuses.

The European Union is taking an important step in this direction with its Digital Services Act (DSA). Once passed, the DSA will not only establish content moderation rules but will also require transparency and accountability mechanisms such as requiring platforms to assess and mitigate the risk that they spread hate speech, have their claims audited and provide data to independent researchers.

The EU must ensure the strongest version of the Act is quickly passed into law.  Governments elsewhere in the world – notably the United States – should follow the lead of the EU and regulate Big Tech companies and force meaningful oversight, including requiring the platforms to assess and mitigate the risk that their services allow hate speech to flourish.