Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict: Are Facebook and Twitter doing enough on hate speech?

Social media giants Facebook and Twitter have come under fire over their roles in the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia.

Critics say they are not doing enough to prevent the spread of hate speech and incitement to violence on their platforms, but that has been rejected by the companies.

We’ve looked at some examples and what is being done to deal with them.

Only about 10% of the population in Ethiopia uses Facebook, according to the company. There are relatively low rates of internet adoption in the country and a lack of broadband infrastructure in some areas.

However, social media is widely used by Ethiopians abroad, and Facebook posts by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed regularly receive tens of thousands of likes and thousands of shares.