Social Media, Mass Atrocity and Transitional Justice: A Conceptual and Normative Framework - Juan Espindola (National Autonomous University of Mexico)

Increasingly, Big Tech companies stand accused of enabling human rights violations. The proliferation of toxic speech in their digital platforms has been in the background of recent episodes of mass atrocity, the most salient of which recently transpired in Myanmar, where the military and nationalist groups used Facebook to dehumanize the Rohingya minority and instigate genocidal acts against it. The involvement of Big Tech companies in mass atrocity raises multiple normative and conceptual challenges. One is to properly conceptualize Facebook’s responsibility for the circulation of toxic speech. On one view, endorsed by the corporation itself, Facebook can be absolved from any significant share of responsibility for these atrocities because toxic speech is the speech of some (rogue) users, hosted but neither created nor endorsed by the company; if anything, Facebook is responsible for failing to anticipate and swiftly remove that speech. This paper will argue that this view is incomplete and misses the big picture. Facebook’s business model relies on the manipulation of its users. This fact alone turns the company into a co-creator of toxic speech rather than a mere transmitter of the speech of others. The implication is that Facebook’s responsibility for the dissemination of toxic speech is greater than usually credited, and this matters for how Facebook—and technological corporations like it—enter transitional justice processes.