Meta’s Employees and the Radio Technicians of the Rwandan Genocide
On April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down — he was Hutu. There were no survivors. Following the assassination, the airwaves were filled with Hutu calling for the death of every Tutsi. For months one radio station, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), was at the vanguard of a hate campaign. Since RTLM’s inception, it aimed to thwart Hutu-Tutsi peace talks, spread anti-Tutsi propaganda, and embolden Hutu extremists.
The men and women who spread fear and hate through this radio station were partly responsible for the months of vicious violence that followed April 6th — 29 percent of the collective violence can be attributed to RTLM. Consequently, they were sentenced to decades in prison. But what about the engineers who maintained and operated the radio station? What blame do they have? Indeed as highly trained technicians in a developing country, they could have chosen to work at any radio station or pursued other technical jobs. Are these engineers at fault for enabling hate to spread?
This is an old question. Does the maker bear fault for how their tool is used? The answer is no, and for a good reason. If each of us were held liable for the damages a lunatic did with our creations, then fear would choke our desire to create. But RTLM is different. The station was solely built to spread hate, infamously labeling Tutsis as cockroaches. If the tool was created for evil, the creator should be liable for the damages. Any pleas of ignorance by the technicians are disingenuous. The evil purpose of RTLM was made apparent when broadcasters started imploring citizens to commit mass violence and naming individuals for extermination. Therefore, the engineers should be held responsible as if they broadcast the messages themself. Without their expertise the station would be voiceless. So what do we do with Meta’s employees?
Meta’s employees chose to work for a company and a leadership team that repeatedly undervalued and harmed the lives of some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people on Earth. In America, they have damaged the psyche of a generation of young people. Abroad, they spread rumors and propaganda that directly led to ethnic cleansing and fueled internecine violence, most notably in Myanmar, Ethiopia, and India.
Yes, the employees share in the blame just as they shared in the profits. Zuckerberg, his shield Sandberg, and the rest of the C-suite did not build the algorithms that pitted Buddhists against Muslims in Myanmar, train the models that fed ethnic militias in Ethiopia or optimize the interfaces that maximized profits over lives throughout India. The employees did all of this knowing the harm their creation caused. I pity the researchers and the content moderators who found and battled these catastrophes, but no one else.
Some will argue if not Meta’s Facebook, hate would be spread through Twitter or other social media. It does not matter.w
We should hold all willing distributors and profiteers of hate accountable. However, no other social media platform has the same record of inciting ethnic violence as Facebook. No other company has systemically ignored and failed to heed so many internal and external calls to stop. Worst of all, Meta did not need to peddle hate to increase revenue. No, they chose to do so because it was expedient.
Anger and controversy are easy ways to grab attention. Meta used this knowledge to propagate the most hateful content to drive user engagement and sell more ads. But people are not one-dimensional creatures, Meta could have leaned on our better nature — awe, knowledge, comedy, competition, love, etc. — to make their platforms more engaging. TikTok was able to do this, Meta could have done it as well. The people at Meta chose not to. They decided to spread hate with every line of code, every feature, and every algorithm quarter after quarter and year after year.
The greatest gift of our liberal capitalist system is each one of us gets a choice, a vote, on what we buy and whom we work for — the people at Meta more than many others. These are moral decisions. These actions are made with no compulsion; they reflect only the values of one’s character. Don’t be fooled by the naive belief that our economy is based on profits alone. Employment and other contracts are not transactions where each party solely maximizes their gain. Character and trust are what undergirds our economy, not profit. There are not enough courts or lawyers on Earth to support a system that is purely profit driven.
Our economy, for the most part, is based on our shared values. Character and trust lubricate every transaction. In such an economy, where free will is maximized and one’s character is paramount, every decision is a moral decision. Can you trust someone who willingly worked for a company that actively and KNOWINGLY spread propaganda that caused death and destruction? Should you trust that person?
The people at Meta are talented, without a doubt. I love the open-source tools that they have created. I don’t bear any personal ill-will towards them. Yes, I was born in Ethiopia, but I’m a refugee and consider myself American only. I do not care for the TPLF or the Tigrinya people — I have more reason than most to dismiss the ethnic violence in Ethiopia. But I cannot ignore the absence of justice and accountability.
The recently laid off Meta employees expect sympathy and open arms after all the damage they’ve done. No. They have profited from a decade of global misery due in no small part to the pernicious influence of their work. Actions omitted or committed have consequences. Every one of them had the power to quit or raise awareness like the former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen. They chose silence. They chose profit. No rational person would let the radio operators who stoked the Rwandan genocide walk free. Why give the Meta employees an exception? They should be held accountable. Not all of them, collective punishment is counterproductive, but certainly some of them.
Where is the justice for the families burned alive in Myanmar because of the lies spread on Facebook? Where is the atonement for the teens who were lost to the dementor that is Instagram? Do not hire Meta employees until you know what they were complicit in. They need to accept responsibility for their work and make whole the communities they have harmed. They are answerable for the suffering their creations have wrought on the world.
Sources
Propaganda and Conflict: Theory and Evidence from the Rwandan Genocide
The impact of hate media in Rwanda
Myanmar: Facebook’s systems promoted violence against Rohingya; Meta owes reparations
The Facebook Crisis in India Might Be the Worst Facebook Crisis of All
Rohingya refugees sue Facebook for $150 billion over Myanmar violence
Rohingya genocide: Massacre and killings
Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show
