Why Southeast Asia’s Politics Are Proving a Problem for Facebook

[Kung-fu Hillbilly]

The Daily Dose
APR 23 2018

Southeast Asia awoke to the misuse of social media much before the West.

Long before Christopher Wylie blew the whistle on how Cambridge Analytica had obtained Facebook data, harvested from 50 million people and allegedly used to target voters in the 2016 U.S. election, activists, journalists and media analysts in southeast Asia were raising the alarm about the weaponization of the social-media website as a tribune for authoritarian leaders and a powerful vector for dangerous hate speech.

“This is online state-sponsored hate in many countries,” Ressa says. “Southeast Asia is extremely vulnerable; our institutions are so weak. They are using the platform to kill all kinds of checks and balances on government.”

In Cambodia, HE, prime minister since 1985, has used his page, which has 9.7 million followers, as a tool to bypass conventional media, using posts and live events to bolster his image as a man of the people.

Mu Sochua, deputy head of the Cambodian National Rescue party, who fled the country after HE’s crackdown, says the platform has “brought about change” and had an impact on democracy, but has also been exploited by HE and his supporters to “create confusion, mistrust and disruption.”

The criticism of Facebook in Southeast Asia boils down to whether the platform is assisting authoritarian leaders directly or indirectly, and also if the company is creating potential conflicts of interest by entering into infrastructure and other joint venture deals with the same administrations.

Full https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/why-so ... book/86306

[that genius]

Penetration in Cambodia must be higher than that, every single person has at least 3 accounts, it seems

''The criticism of Facebook in Southeast Asia boils down to whether the platform is assisting authoritarian leaders directly or indirectly,'

Same old tired hypocrisy from the west again, of course NO WAY is FB helping the system in Murika or the apartheid state of Israel, the UK Tory govt, right?

[canucklhead]

"9.7 million followers."Ya right!