Attempts by government to control the spread of disinformation, propaganda and hate speech over Facebook have met with limited success. The 2013 Telecommunications Act, which prohibits a range of behavior using a telecommunication network, has had more of a chilling effect on public discussion and debate than it has had on inflammatory and discriminatory social media content. The Telecommunications Act continues to be used to punish political dissent and 3 public criticism of the military and government leaders. According to a 2017 report by Free Expression Myanmar, of the 107 cases brought under section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Act, 96 were brought under the NLD, and most of the cases were initiated by government, military, or senior party/business leaders against journalists, human rights activists, and artists for exposing wrongdoing or engaging in public criticism. (Free Expression Myanmar, 2017). This has had the effect, according to Callahan (2019), of causing significant self-censorship among the press and activists, who fear being sued and imprisoned for expressing public criticism of leaders and powerful elites. Covering controversial topics such as the incitement of hate speech and discrimination against religious minorities has also been threatened by Article 66(d) of the Telecommunications Act, as in the case of the editor of Myanmar Now, who was accused of defamation for sharing an article on his Facebook account. The article argued that monk Wirathu, who praised the killer of Muslim lawyer Ko Ni, a prominent NLD legal adviser, had committed sinful behavior in doing so, and was no longer worthy of his status as a monk. In response, a Mandalay resident and Wirathu supporter filed a defamation case against Swe Win, the editor, in a Mandalay court in 2017. The case, which was still ongoing in January 2019, “underscores the hostility of the environment that Myanmar journalists now operate in…. Less often talked about is the use of the law by ultranationalist monks and their supporters to silence journalists. Few cases illustrate that effort better than Ko Swe Win’s” (Moe Myint, 2019a). The NLD government, upon coming to power in 2016, also took the crucial step of banning the Ma Ba Tha organization, a Buddhist group that had been instrumental in spreading hate speech and discrimination against religious minorities and particularly against Muslims. The government also took other measures including banning Wirathu, a monk noted for inciting hate 3 Callahan, ​Myanmar’s 2020 Elections. 8