The Problematics of Social Media in Myanmar Internet penetration has been growing rapidly in Myanmar with the number of users increasing by 3.5 million between 2019 and 2021, bringing the total to 23.65 million internet users.1 More than half of the Burmese population actively used Facebook as of January 2021.2 Such a rapid uptake of social media within a short period of time certainly comes with issues. Some of the most prominent challenges have been a) voter suppression; b) hate speech; c) misinformation; d) lack of transparency; and e) problematic political ads. These issues are directly linked to the lack of critical digital literacy (CDL), a key skill that goes beyond digital literacy to instil critical thinking skills about technology usage, including the authenticity of content, and how it is consumed and shared.3 Social media’s rapid rise in Myanmar was not accompanied by a commensurate effort to impart CDL to the netizens. Myanmar’s multiethnic society, coupled with the military’s dominance over Internet and telecommunication companies, exposed social media companies’ inability and unwillingness to handle these problems. Facebook was synonymous with the Internet in Myanmar until the CDM, resulting in a unique set of benefits and challenges. Access to the platform empowered Burmese citizens to freely receive and share information, forge a sense of belonging and self-expression and allowed for greater political communication between the people and government. Conversely, Facebook failed to control the issues that accompanied its rapid uptake, such as hate speech and misinformation, which has had serious repercussions, most notably the displacement of more than a million people since the military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in August 2017. Since then, Facebook has introduced measures to address these multi-layered issues, including the identification of networks of accounts, pages and groups of users masking their identities to promote misleading content, as well as the use of artificial intelligence technology along with human review to combat hate speech. 4 Additionally, a ‘verified’ feature was introduced to help identify authentic content and segregate it from military-run Facebook groups.5 To act against misinformation, the 1 2 3 4 5 Simon Kemp, “Digital Myanmar: 2021”, DataReportal, 12 February 2021, https://datareportal.com/reports/ digital-2020-myanmar. As of January 2021, there were 28,780,000 Facebook users in Myanmar in January 2021, which accounted for 51.8 per cent of its entire population. https://napoleoncat.com/stats/facebook-users-in-myanmar/ 2021/01. Anuradha Rao, “Social media and critical digital literacy in India’s general elections”, ISAS Brief No. 643, Institute of South Asian Studies, 29 March 2019. https://www.isas.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/ 2019/03/ISAS-Briefs-No.-643.pdf. Facebook categorises hate speech as a direct attack against people on the basis of characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease. The company defines attacks as violent or dehumanising speech, harmful stereotypes, statements of inferiority, expressions of contempt, disgust or dismissal, cursing and calls for exclusion or segregation. https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/hate_speech. Rafael Frankel, “How Facebook Is Preparing for Myanmar’s 2020 Election”, Facebook, 31 August 2020, https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/preparing-for-myanmars-2020-election/. 2