What happened 

Fueled by misinformation spread on social media, including a viral video falsely alleging that a Muslim restaurateur had poisoned Sinhala-Buddhist customers, riots started in Ampara, Sri Lanka, and quickly spread. 

At least three people were killed and many businesses and mosques were destroyed in the violence that ensued. In addition, the riots negatively impacted Sri Lanka's economy, with many tourists cancelling visits to the heavily tourist-dependent country.

The Sri Lankan government responded by temporarily banning Facebook and other social media platforms to prevent further violence.

Why it happened

The root cause was a catastrophic lack of local moderation resources; at the time of the riots, Facebook reportedly had only two Sinhala-speaking content reviewers for millions of users. 

This lack of linguistic and cultural context meant that automated filters and human moderators failed to recognize slurs and coded incitement. 

Corporate accountability was limited by a "reactive" rather than "proactive" approach to human rights in smaller markets, ignoring years of warnings from local activists about rising ethno-nationalist content. 

The company later admitted that its platform had been misused and recognised the human rights impacts resulting from its inaction.