From the New York Times on Michael Barbarrow, this is The Daily.

Today, in Sri Lanka, Buddhists were already suspicious of Muslims.

Then came a series of damning posts on Facebook.

How fake rumors on social media are fueling real violence in developing countries.

It's Wednesday, May 16th.

Sri Lanka has long-standing tensions between different ethnic groups.

Three-quarters of Sri Lanka's population is in a lease and overwhelmingly Buddhist.

There's the majority who are Sinhali's Buddhists,

and also two minority groups, Tommels and Muslims.

Tension has been on the rise in Buddhist majority Sri Lanka since 2012,

said it would be fueled by hard-line Buddhists.

Those tensions had existed for a while.

They are destroying our Buddhist sites, and we definitely cannot stand by as Buddhist and watch as that is happening.

But then in late February, suddenly there was an explosion of violence.

And what's behind that violence in particular?

The short answer is rumors on Facebook.

Amanda Talb and her colleague, Max Fisher, have been reporting on the violence in Sri Lanka.

They all kind of came down to this idea that the Muslim minority in the country

was somehow out to get the Sinhali's Buddhist majority.

That the Muslims in parliament were secret extremist control by Saudi Arabia.

That Muslim doctors were out secretly sterilizing Buddhist women.

That Muslim close-sellers were putting drugs in underwear that they would sell to Sinhali's women to sterilize them.

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