San Francisco, Jun 3 (IANS): Social networking giant Facebook has partnered with the Asia Foundation and launched the Resiliency Initiative website, to combat hate and intolerance online.
The Resiliency initiative is community-centered and aims to promote tolerance, strengthen interfaith and inter-ethnic understanding, and counter violent extremism in Asia Pacific, Facebook shared in a post on Tuesday.
"The Resiliency Initiative website provides civil society organisations with a suite of tools and resources to help them harness social media to build stronger communities -- particularly in areas affected by violent conflict. It includes guidance on getting started on social media, creating effective online content, managing their presence on social media, measuring impact, and combating misinformation, as well as case studies with insights from communities across the region," said Adam Burke, Regional Director, The Asia Foundation, in a statement.
"At Facebook, we aim to identify and remove harmful content from our platforms as quickly as possible -- and we've made good progress in this area. But this is just one part of the solution. It's equally important to enable constructive dialogue and encourage counter speech in order to promote social cohesion and counter offline harm. We are pleased to have launched The Resiliency Initiative in partnership with The Asia Foundation as one of our flagship programmes to address hate and violent extremism," added Nawab Osman, Head of Counterterrorism and Dangerous Organisations (APAC), Facebook.
Currently available only in English, the website is also being launched in Bengali, Thai and Urdu in the coming weeks. More languages will follow in the future.
In the second half of this year, the initiative will work with civil society organisations in Asia Pacific to build social resilience campaigns to combat hate online, and expand the reach of the programme into new communities in the region. Facebook is also partnering with experts on a digital storytelling training programme.
Started by the non-profit Asia Foundation, the initiative began with online workshops for 60 organisations from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Pakistan and the Philippines.