“The Tatmadaw sees Facebook as their internet nemesis because it’s the dominant communication channel in the country, and has been hostile to the military,” Human Rights Watch Asia Deputy Director Phil Robertson told Reuters, referring to the country’s army.
“Since the Burmese people are rapidly moving online to organise a massive civil disobedience campaign, shuttering access becomes a top priority.”
A company spokeswoman on Thursday urged Myanmar authorities to restore access to Facebook and WhatsApp to the country’s 54 million residents.
Facebook will have to decide how to play the delicate balance of protecting the democratic politicians and activists versus cooperating with the new regime to get services restored–an especially acute example of the political dilemmas the company faces worldwide.
In nearby Vietnam, for example, Facebook recently acquiesced to government demands that it censor more political criticism to avoid a blockade.
The service has mostly avoided shutdowns outside of countries such as China, where it has long been blocked, but currently faces pressure in India, Turkey and elsewhere.
In 2018, it banned army chief Min Aung Hlaing – now Myanmar’s military ruler – and 19 other senior officers and organizations, and took down hundreds of pages and accounts run by military members for coordinated inauthentic behavior.
Ahead of the Myanmar’s November election, Facebook announced it had taken down a network of 70 fake accounts and pages operated by members of the military that had posted either positive content about the army or criticism of Suu Kyi and her party.
A Reuters review early this week found dozens of pages and accounts alleging election fraud – the reason given by the army for seizing power. The posts started in October and continued after the election; in the 48 hours before the coup, many of the pages called for military intervention.
After the coup, those pages turned to posts accusing the ousted government of fraud and justifying the takeover, the review showed. Some of the pages published coordinated posts criticizing or threatening politicians like Suu Kyi as well as journalists and activists.
Facebook took down dozens of the accounts on Wednesday, shortly before being shut down. Reuters could not determine their provenance.
And just two days before the coup, the new military-installed information minister, Chit Hlaing, shared a story purporting to be from Radio Free Myanmar, which Facebook banned after it was used in anti-Rohingya disinformation campaigns. The minister was not immediately reachable for comment.
