Eritrea: AI Research Institute Warns of ‘Unchecked’ Warmongering On Social Media Fueling Ethiopia-Eritrea Tensions

Addis Abeba– The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), an interdisciplinary research organization focused on equitable and community-rooted AI development, has warned that “social media platforms are spreading violent warmongering content encouraging all-out war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, again,” urging international and regional actors to act swiftly to prevent a repeat of the devastating Tigray war.

In a statement, DAIR’s Social Media Harms Team urged the international community to “urgently act to stop the looming war” and to uphold the “precarious and imperfect” Pretoria peace deal that ended the 2020-2022 Tigray war.

“It is the responsibility of regional bodies like the African Union and multilateral institutions like the United Nations,” the Institute said, “to de-escalate current tensions and avoid a regional war.” DAIR also called for social media companies to be “pressured to curb the violent speech and warmongering” that it says is spreading “unchecked” on their platforms.

The warning comes amid growing diplomatic friction between the two countries. Former President Mulatu Teshome previously accused Eritrea of attempting to “exploit divisions within the TPLF.” Similarly, Lt. Gen. Tsadkan Gebretensae, Vice President of the Tigray Interim Administration, warned that war between Ethiopia and Eritrea “seems inevitable,” as military preparations reach their “final stages.”

DAIR, led by Dr. Timnit Gebru–a former co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team who was dismissed in 2020 after raising concerns about discrimination and bias in AI research–said it has spent the past three years “researching and documenting the role of social media platforms” during the Tigray war, using computational tools to quantify hate speech and interviewing moderators to understand the systems behind what it described as “failures to adequately curb genocidal language.”

The Institute said “these platforms pledged to do better” following revelations that they “promoted violence that incited genocide against the Rohingya in 2016.” It mentioned Facebook, which it said had claimed to be doing “longstanding work to protect people in Ethiopia” when faced with criticism during the Tigray war. However, the organization said it is seeing “an acceleration of the same type of warmongering on social media platforms” that it had documented “at the beginning of the catastrophic Tigray war in 2020.”

“It’s not enough,” the statement continued, “to perform a postmortem analysis after millions have been killed, maimed, or displaced.”

DAIR cited the case of Professor Meareg Amare, who was murdered after Facebook failed to remove a post labeling him a traitor. DAIR cited the case of Professor Meareg Amare, who was murdered after Facebook allegedly failed to remove a post labeling him a traitor. Facebook is now facing a $2.4 billion lawsuit filed by his son, Abrham Meareg, and Fisseha Tekle, alongside Kenya’s Katiba Institute. The lawsuit accuses Meta’s algorithm of having “amplified inciteful, hateful, and dangerous content,” contributing to serious harm, including the killing of Meareg’s father after “inciteful posts” circulated on the platform.

“Even now,” the Institute said, “Facebook is still spreading clear calls for violence,” pointing to a video by a known Eritrean government supporter who threatened to “turn Tigray into dust”–a video that had over 251,000 views at the time of writing.

“This spread of violent language is not unique to Facebook,” the statement added. “Clear calls for mass violence and warmongering on TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube are exponentially growing,” with “no signs of action by these companies.” According to DAIR, both supporters and opponents of the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments have “spent months antagonizing each other,” “promoting the recruitment of fighters,” and “demonizing enemy factions.”

The institute said well-known pro-government Ethiopian activists have used their large followings to make “clear calls for all-out war against Eritrea,” including calls to annex Eritrean territory.