hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove of disable access to such content, if necessary.” According to the Commission, this has resulted in significant progress in removing hate speech and reviewing reports of hate speech promptly (Spencer-Smith, 2018). Coordinated efforts by the European Commission through its Action Plan against Disinformation and its Elections Package have helped to counteract some of the most dangerous disinformation and hate speech in the recent European Parliament campaigns. These efforts including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Mozilla agreeing to an EU Code of Practice (a voluntary code) and establishing a “rapid alert system” to catch and highlight disinformation in a timely fashion (Polyakova and Fried, 2019; European Commission, 2019). Social media companies have also engaged in a range of self regulation efforts to counter bad publicity, government pressure, and public demands. Cooperation with government institutions and civil society in recent European Parliament elections demonstrates that such self-regulatory mechanisms can be effective (European Commission, 2019). Cooperation between state bodies and other groups including civil society and technology initiatives, as in 2017 Kenyan elections where there was cooperation between Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission and various civil society groups focused on hate speech monitoring, has helped to counter hate speech and disinformation (Boti-Phiri, 2017). In the run-up to the 2019 elections in Indonesia, a platform supported by election watchdog the Association for Elections and Democracy, Google Indonesia, the General Elections Commission, and the Elections Supervisory Agency, among other groups, provided a mechanism for users to report hate speech and disinformation (Jakarta Post, 2019). The Spread of Hate Speech and Disinformation in Myanmar Political opening in Myanmar was marked by the end of the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2010, the participation (and success) of NLD and other opposition parties in the 2012 by elections, political liberalization that allowed for relative media freedom, digital media openness, and a range of other reforms. These reforms opened the door for increasing democratic freedoms, robust public discussions on democracy, and a dramatic, rapid increase in connectivity to the outside world. 5