Social Media, Religious Freedom Raised at Global Summit

The International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit in Washington, D.C., met last week in part to find ways to help promote religious freedom on social media platforms and at the same time stop the spread of hate and disinformation. ..."There are a lot of great things happening… Connectivity between closed communities that are trying to live out their faith in some way. Secondly, raising awareness," pointing to the Rohingya in Burma. "When the genocide started happening in Burma, when the coup happened and [Burma]… people think that's not just political, that also had religious overtones for the Muslim [population]. And what they were doing is using social media to promote that this was happening and warn each other and protect each other," Sabatier said. At the same time, she added, "The harmful practices are everything from primarily on social media, their use for hate speech, or some kind of divisiveness or disinformation campaigns… that often leads to offline behavior… whether it's mob violence, somebody being arrested, somebody being [surveilled]…human rights online are just as important as they are offline."