company worked with three fact checking partners in Myanmar – BOOM, AFP Fact Check and Fact Crescendo – to fight misinformation. 6 Facebook’s efforts in these areas, as well as its immediate actions on user-reported promilitary pages and accounts7 weakened the military’s social media presence and influence. Nonetheless, problematic issues persisted and reappeared during the November 2020 elections and again during the CDM,8 highlighting the complexities involved in controlling and maintaining a free and fair internet via social media. Soon after the Myanmar military banned Facebook in early February 2021, Twitter saw a significant rise in new users from the country. 9 According to Frontier Myanmar, on 2 February 2021, #AungSanSuuKyi_Government had just 10 tweets, but on 4 February 2021, it had over 40,000. Overall, there were more than five million posts on Twitter that used the hashtag.10 As of August 2021, Twitter was among the top 10 social media platforms used in Myanmar after Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Bigo Live. 11 However, due to its nascent presence in Myanmar, Twitter lacks infrastructural support to handle issues of misinformation or content verification. Anatomy of the Protest Movement Social media has played a visible and critical role in Myanmar’s domestic politics since the coup. The CDM, launched as a non-violent resistance movement by government healthcare workers refusing to show up to work, mushroomed into a nation-wide protest movement largely organised over the Internet. The protests have also served to highlight the crisis in the international arena, with the hope that foreign intervention could possibly change the generals’ minds. In the initial stages of the movement, protestors were able to circumvent attempts to block the Internet and social media. For instance, the ban on Facebook resulted in a migration of Internet users to Twitter who were able to share details of their new Twitter accounts on their Facebook accounts during the several hours it took for Internet providers to enforce the ban.12 Protestors were also able to access the Internet via free tools that require little 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Ibid. International Crisis Group, “Myanmar’s military struggles to control the virtual battlefield”, Report No. 314, 18 May 2021, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/314-myanmars-militarystruggles-control-virtual-battlefield. Fanny Potkin and Poppy McPherson, “Spreading like wildfire’: Facebook fights hate speech, misinformation before Myanmar poll”, Reuters, 6 November 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-electionfacebook/spreading-like-wildfire-facebook-fights-hate-speech-before-myanmar-poll-idUSKBN27L300. “Twitter and SMS: Myanmar’s new frontiers of fear”, Frontier Myanmar, 24 February 2021, https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/twitter-and-sms-myanmars-new-frontiers-of-fear/. Ibid. Top Charts: Myanmar Social, https://sensortower.com/android/rankings/top/phone/myanmar/social? date=2021-08-09. Ibid. 3