Myanmar exploited Facebook
The military exploited Facebook’s wide reach in Myanmar, where it is so broadly used that many of the country’s 18 million internet users confuse the Silicon Valley socialmedia platform with the internet. Human-rights groups blame the antiRohingya propaganda for inciting murders, rapes and the largest forced human migration in recent history, involving 700,000 people.
Although Facebook took down the official accounts of senior Myanmar military leaders in August, the breadth and details of the propaganda campaign — which was hidden behind fake names and sham accounts — went undetected. The campaign, described by five people who asked for anonymity because they feared for their safety, included hundreds of military members who created troll accounts and news and celebrity pages on Facebook and then flooded them with incendiary comments and posts timed for peak viewership.
Working in shifts out of bases clustered in foothills near the capital, Naypyitaw, officers also were tasked with collecting intelligence on popular accounts and criticizing posts unfavorable to the military, the people said.
Facebook confirmed many of the details about the shadowy, militarydriven campaign. The company’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said it had found “clear and deliberate attempts to covertly spread propaganda that were directly linked to the Myanmar military.”
On Monday, following questions from The New York Times, Facebook said it took down a series of accounts that supposedly were focused on entertainment but were instead tied to the military. Those accounts had 1.3 million followers.
“The military has gotten a lot of benefit from Facebook,” said Thet Swe Win, the founder of Synergy, a group that focuses on fostering social harmony in Myanmar. “I wouldn’t say Facebook is directly involved in the ethnic cleansing, but there is a responsibility they had to take proper actions to avoid becoming an instigator of genocide.”
In August, after months of reports about anti-Rohingya propaganda on Facebook, the company acknowledged that it had been too slow to act in Myanmar. The company has said it is bolstering its efforts to stop such abuses.
The previously unreported actions by Myanmar’s military on Facebook are among the first examples of an authoritarian government using Facebook against its people. It is another facet of the disruptive disinformation campaigns that are unfolding on the site.
In the past, statebacked Russians and Iranians spread divisive and inflammatory messages through the social network to people in other countries.