“A reconstruction of Sri Lanka’s descent into violence, based on interviews with officials, victims and ordinary users caught up in online anger, found that Facebook’s newsfeed played a central role in nearly every step from rumor to killing.” A very interesting report from the NYT’s Amanda Taub and Max Fisher: Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match. (It’s not that all tech and social media is bad. But it sure is playing out a lot differently than we expected…)

+ “In down moments between stories, we looked for cases where Facebook could be linked to instances of violence — a barometer for generalized social disruption — that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise. They were everywhere. They piled up in our notebooks.” On Twitter, Max Fisher explains more about what led to the story.