One of the groups named in the March report was the “Fano”, a group of ethnic Amhara militias with a reputation for brutality that has been involved in the Tigray war, sometimes fighting alongside Ethiopian government forces.
Facebook said it had observed a group of accounts affiliated with the militia group, including some based in Sudan, using its platform to “sow calls for violence”, promote armed conflict, recruit and raise funds.
Since the war began, displaced Tigrayans have linked the Fano militia with human rights abuses, including killings of civilians, looting and rape.
Although the Facebook team said it had recommended that the Fano-affiliated network be removed, it suggested that other prejudicial actors promoting violence on its platform were simultaneously escaping. In a bold headline, the team warned: “Current mitigation strategies are not enough.”
The Facebook documents also detail the platform’s removal of a group of accounts linked to the Oromo diaspora, primarily based in Egypt, that targeted Ethiopian audiences with highly inflammatory content, including “explicit calls for violence against officials. government and other ethnic groups ”.
“Over the past two years, we have actively invested to add more staff with local expertise, operational resources, and additional review capacity to expand the number of local languages we support to include Amharic, Oromo, Somali, and Tigrinya. We have worked to improve our detection. so that we can remove more harmful content at scale. We have also partnered extensively with international and local experts to better understand and mitigate the increased risks on the platform, “the spokesperson said.
With information from AFP, EFE and Reuters