6/9/22, 1:06 PM Is Facebook’s bias a source of concern for Myanmar’s 2020 election? | Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd Temporary or permanent bans have been issued on accounts that belong to nationalist monks as well as to accounts that regularly use profanities against Muslims. What’s worse, Facebook officially declared on August 2018 that they would be terminating the accounts belonging to Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the office of the Commander-in-Chief as well as Myawaddy, which resulted in an aggregate termination of 20 accounts. Facebook claims that those accounts were in direct breach of Community Standards. On October 15 2018, Facebook announces the permanent termination of 10 accounts and 13 pages that were related to the military and are fake accounts. That was the second time in a little over a month that accounts in relation to the military were being banned. While Facebook has been consistently restricting nationalist monks and military-related accounts, it had so far failed to take action against users, pages, and posts that openly derogates Buddhism and Buddhists. Political analyst and ex-member of parliament U Ye Tun (Thibaw) says Facebook is biased in its actions. “I see it as unfair. They stand on the side of those that believe Muslims in Myanmar are being oppressed and had seemingly only employed those that are prejudiced towards that point of view when deciding on Community Standard breaches.” There also are plenty of questions being raised about the usage of explicit language in criticism. The major opposition USDP’s spokesperson U Thein Tun Oo claims that in particular, posts that strongly criticize the ruling NLD party get shut down quickly while negative posts against other political parties are ignored. “Let’s analyze hate speech. They don’t seem to regard derogatory comments against the USDP as hate speech. Try swearing at the ruling party. It won’t take long before the notice for infringement of community standards arrives. It looks like they’re working for the ruling party,” said Thein Tun Oo. The example - Dr Thet Thet Khine One of the most notable examples is Dr. Thet Thet Khine, an ex-member of the NLD and MP, whose interview video was taken down. On November 1, 2019, People Media interviewed and posted said interview’s video on Facebook. It was subsequently taken down the very next day. On November 2, Facebook flagged the video as breaching community standards. The 9 minutes long interview video of the outspoken, ex-NLD MP was titled along the lines of “Not right or wrong but like or dislike” in which she discussed some internal party affairs and also criticized that the current government’s outlook was lacking, particularly in economics. The Daily Eleven Newspaper contacted Facebook over the removal of the video and the reply by Facebook was that it was not a matter of community standard breach but due to intellectual property rights. But Facebook allowed the video online again after it had checked and determined that the video was, in fact, not breaching any rules. It was confirmed by People Media on November 3. This case alone brings many questions regarding Facebook’s murky censorship policies. Monitored by the government The transport and communications ministry had formed a Social Media Monitoring Team to keep an eye on happenings on Facebook as well as other social media platforms. On February 7, 2018, the ministry announced that the team was formed to investigate and act on attempts that seek to undermine national security through social media platforms. When asked by MP Dr Maung Thin on the budget, tasks and goals that were to be achieved by said team and whether it was in accord with budget usage policies of the President’s Office, the ministry also clarified in the parliament that it had spent Ks 6.424 billion in terms of both hardware and software for the Social Media Monitoring Team. The deputy minister for transport and communication also replied that the monitoring team will be inspecting content that will adversely affect the behavior of children and youths, undermine and threaten rule of law, national security, and peace. The team will also work to educate the public as well as prevent harmful and dangerous activity by cooperating with service providers as well as Facebook itself. https://elevenmyanmar.com/news/is-facebooks-bias-a-source-of-concern-for-myanmars-2020-election-0 4/10