SHANGHAI — Civil society groups in Myanmar on Thursday criticized Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, arguing that he mischaracterized his company’s effectiveness at detecting and quashing messages encouraging violence in the country.

Taking aim at comments Mr. Zuckerberg made in a recent interview, the groups said that Facebook had no consistent methods for dealing with hate speech in Myanmar. The same problems keep recurring, they said, with the company routinely failing to follow up on their comments and suggestions.

In a conversation with Ezra Klein of Vox this week, Mr. Zuckerberg referred to a pair of chain letters that were widely shared in Myanmar on Facebook Messenger last year. One message warned Buddhist groups about an imminent attack by Muslims, expected on Sept. 11. The other, spread among Muslims, cautioned of violence from Buddhist nationalists on the same date.

“So that’s the kind of thing where I think it is clear that people were trying to use our tools in order to incite real harm,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “Now, in that case, our systems detect that that’s going on. We stop those messages from going through.”