5/22/22, 5:59 PM How Facebook’s Rise Fueled Chaos and Confusion in Myanmar | WIRED then it took attempt after attempt after attempt, and the involvement of civil society groups, to get you to remove it. Why couldn't it be removed within 24 hours?” Zuckerberg responded that what was happening in Myanmar was a “terrible tragedy, and we need to do more,” before Leahy tersely interjected, “We all agree with that.” Zuckerberg then laid out his three fixes for the company’s Myanmar operations. In an interview, Aung Naing Soe says he was approached by a member of Special Branch, a notorious intelligence unit of the Myanmar Police Force, who questioned him about the false accusation of being a member of ARSA, which, in the time it was on Facebook, was widely shared including by a former member of parliament. For the next two months, whenever he travelled outside of Yangon, he had to inform the officer where he was going, he says. Not that the increased government scrutiny deterred Aung Naing Soe from pursuing his work as a journalist. He was arrested in late October 2017 along with two foreign journalists working for Turkey’s state broadcaster for flying a drone near parliament on a reporting trip. The group pleaded guilty and were held for two months in jail before the case was dropped. Aung Naing Soe says that while the other journalists were only questioned for a few days, he was interrogated for 11 or 12 days because of the Facebook posts. If the intentions of the police were to deter Aung Naing Soe from reporting, they didn’t work. He quickly returned to covering protests and jailings of other journalists while doling out cigarettes to fellow reporters in the informal Yangon press corps. He has become an outspoken advocate for media freedom, even joking about his stint in jail. “The good part of being arrested is this problem is officially solved,” he says with a laugh. “Police have an official record that I’m not part of the group.” Civil society groups and researchers say that Aung Naing Soe’s experience—particularly the vehemence of attacks against him on Facebook—was not unique. Raymond Serrato, a digital researcher and analyst who has tracked hate speech and bots related to Myanmar, found a huge uptick in hate speech on Facebook as the Rohingya crisis unfolded last October. Anti-Rohingya groups saw a 200 percent increase in activity. Many of the posts, he says, compared Muslims to dogs or other animals. “There was a lot of dehumanization,” he says. “A lot of mutilated bodies.” If Facebook did not see the pages, it is because they “didn’t know where to look,” he says. “It is clear they don’t know about the ethnic and social politics in the countries” that they operate in. Meanwhile, the Myanmar government and military have been among the most adept and sophisticated users of Facebook, using the platform to put out their own narrative of the Rohingya crisis. The office of the Commander-in-Chief in March posted photos of dismembered children and dead babies, claiming they were attacked by Rohingya terrorists, to counter British MPs, who were sharply critical of the country’s handling of the Rohingya crisis. Zaw Htay, the government spokesman, has used the platform on numerous occasions to share debunked photos purporting to show Rohingya burning their own homes and derided claims of sexual violence by soldiers as “fake rape.” In the past, he often used a Facebook page with the pseudonym “Hmuu Zaw.” A former senior government official said Zaw Htay was the “focal person,” of Facebook’s dealings with the country’s government. The relationship that Facebook has with the Zaw Htay, a retired Army https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-and-confusion-in-myanmar/ 13/16