The Myanmar government plans to work with Facebook to remove social media posts that incite violence or contain hate speech ahead of the upcoming election, Channel News Asia reported.
Ye Htut, the Minister for Information, said that “co-operation” established after past outbreaks of communal violence would be repeated during the campaign period that begins September 8.
“…We try to apply the same co-operation in the election period, not to control the freedom of information but try to prevent the hate speech and other inciting of violence or communal violence during the election campaign,” he said.
Civil society groups have expressed concern that action taken ostensibly to combat hate speech could be used to censor freedom of expression online.
“Our very first concern is how the government and Facebook will work together… who will be in charge of what to take down, what is allowed and what is not allowed on Facebook,” Htaike Htaike Aung, Programme Manager of Myanmar ICT for Development Organisation said.
Facebook was blocked entirely for several hours in July 2014 after deadly clashes between Buddhist and Muslim communities.
The Myanmar Times reported that the outages followed discussions between the government and representatives of the social media giant, which declined to comment.
