DEMOCRACY DISCONNECTED: SOCIAL MEDIA’S CAUSTIC INFLUENCE ON SOUTHEAST ASIA’S FRAGILE REPUBLICS to manipulate video in real time. Using software called Face2Face and a webcam, the researchers showed how they can capture an individual’s facial movements and digitally alter videos to make famous politicians such as George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump mimic the expressions.89 These are just a couple of examples of the dramatic advances being made in voice synthetization and video manipulation technologies. While these tools remain in their infancy, they will likely be put into widespread use soon. Obviously, the potential of such technology at the grassroots level to incite conflict and at the national level to mislead the public is a disturbing proposition. It is, therefore, becoming increasingly imperative to find ways to mitigate this looming threat. Governments across Southeast Asia are already grappling with legal measures to help curb the spread of the online hate speech that is inflaming internecine conflicts. However, the immaturity and politicization of the legal institutions in many of these countries are proving problematic because the enforcement of these laws is only serving to further curtail democratic freedoms. In some cases, laws against defamation are being interpreted too broadly, making them a useful tool to silence dissent. In Myanmar, for instance, a controversial provision of the country’s 2013 Telecommunications Law has led to a number of arrests of individuals who have been accused of libel for their social media posts that are critical of government leaders, a situation that ironically has only worsened under NLD leadership.90 The government took further measures to assert control over social media in March 2018 when the legislature approved funding for a Social Media Monitoring Team, ostensibly to ward off domestic instability.91 In Thailand, the ambiguity surrounding the Computer Crimes Act of 2007 and the country’s long-standing lèse-majesté law, which prohibits insult to the monarchy, have combined to create a particularly repressive speech environment online. Among a number of harsh penalties meted out recently, a Thai man was sentenced to 35 years in prison for Facebook posts that authorities deemed critical of the royal family in 2017 and eight individuals were arrested and charged with sedition the previous year for running a Facebook page satirizing the country’s prime minister.92 In Indonesia, the Electronic Information and Transactions Law has served to stymie some of the hate speech online, but only insofar as it has quelled government critics.93 Similarly, Malaysia’s legislature in April 2018 approved a bill that would impose punishments of up to six years in prison for the creation and dissemination of “fake news,” in a move that critics viewed as an attempt to stifle free speech ahead of the country’s general election the following month.94 Meanwhile, a draft cybercrime law in Cambodia has 89 Alina Polyakova and Spencer Phipps Boyer, “The future of political warfare: Russia, the West, and the coming age of digital competition,” (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution), https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-future-ofpolitical-warfare-russia-the-west-and-the-coming-age-of-global-digital-competition/; Olivia Solon, “The Future of Fake News: Don’t Believe Everything You Read, See or Hear,” The Guardian, July 26, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2017/jul/26/fake-news-obama-video-trump-face2face-doctored-content. 90 Francis Wade, “In Burma, the Party that Once Defended Dissidents is Letting Them be Thrown in Jail,” The Washington Post, August 11, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/08/11/inburma-the-party-that-once-defended-dissidents-is-throwing-them-into-jail/?utm_term=.abee2bf36a39. 91 Zaw Zaw Htwe and Aung Kyaw Nyunt, “Critics Rail Against Govt Budget for Monitoring of Facebook,” The Myanmar Times, March 22, 2018, https://www.mmtimes.com/news/critics-rail-against-govt-budget-monitoring-facebook.html. 92 Aim Sinpeng, “Southeast Asian Cyberspace: Politics, Censorship, Polarisation,” New Mandala, November 1, 2017, http://www.newmandala.org/southeast-asian-cyberspace-politics-censorship-polarisation/. 93 “EDITORIAL: Countering Hate Speech,” The Jakarta Post, November 28, 2017, http://www.thejakartapost.com/ academia/2017/11/28/editorial-countering-hate-speech.html. 94 Hannah Beech, “As Malaysia Moves to Ban ‘Fake News,’ Worries About Who Decides the Truth,” The New York Times, April 2, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/world/asia/malaysia-fake-news-law.html. 18 | Foreign Policy at Brookings