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Re:UN: Facebook has turned into a beast in Myanmar by dragonwriter on Monday April 02, 2018 @04:01PM (#16738700)
> Imagine an in person rally of 10k people. It would be a huge event both and get huge coverage. Bigger rallies will have even more. So some local media or local government has a chance to counter the falsehoods and make people aware.

In Myanmar, as in most other cases, the government was an active belligerent; they wouldn't have been a check in any case. Genocides are usually conducted by groups that are already dominant in government, media, and society in general, so the kind of social institutions you point to are usually subverted before rallies (physical or virtual) directed imminently at violence occur.

So, it's quite unlikely that those institutions will check in-person rallies; more likely they will be organizing them and spreading their message.

Re:UN: Facebook has turned into a beast in Myanmar by makomk on Monday April 02, 2018 @05:13PM (#16739373)
Indeed. One of the most horrific modern genocides, the Rwandan genocide, was organised via radio broadcasts and the state's police and military.
Re:UN: Facebook has turned into a beast in Myanmar by enitihas on Monday April 02, 2018 @04:08PM (#16738759)
Okay. But even with the government as part of the gathering the premise remains the same. Even for the government it is vastly easier to use the new communication platforms to spread hate and solidify it's grip on power. I am not saying the government couldn't use posters and banners and newspapers ads, I am just saying the new tools make it vastly easy and provide the government a shield that they didn't know about it.