Myanmar ARTICLE 19 legal framework also empowers the military to demand that private companies cooperate with its human rights violations. Tech company responses Since the February 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military has been unable to fully enforce its desired control of the online information space. This is partly because prominent platforms have not recognised the military as the legitimate government and, in an unusual move, have deplatformed or removed content from military-linked accounts. The first case study below offers a closer look at these actions. These companies also appear to be refusing to cooperate with military requests. After the coup, Facebook explicitly said that it had ‘indefinitely suspended the ability for Myanmar government agencies to send content removal requests to Facebook through our normal channels reserved for authorities around the world’.186 The non-compliance has had 2 notable consequences. First, the military’s main option visà-vis tech companies is to block them altogether. Since the days immediately following the coup, it has issued blocking orders for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Instagram. Such blocking orders have not always been very effective, though, since service providers have implemented them inconsistently and because many users use VPNs to get around them. 187 The military has certainly restricted access to such services, but it has not managed to completely prevent their use. Second, the deplatforming of the military on key platforms and military attempts to restrict access to such apps have splintered and changed the digital market, with Myanmar users relying on a much broader array of applications than previously. 188 From a corporate responsibility perspective, this means that the actions of one company are less significant. Before the coup, attention had been focused on Facebook’s failures in Myanmar. Now, industry-wide action is needed, but as highlighted in the case study below, company reactions have been mixed. Although the military has struggled to control content on foreign tech platforms, it has effectively taken control of telecommunications service providers and much of the country’s internet infrastructure, enabling it to order internet shutdowns or blocks as well as the sharing of user data or the installation of surveillance tools. Myanmar has 4 telecommunications service providers, 2 of which were already linked to the military before the coup. Mytel, for example, is a joint venture of the Myanmar and Vietnamese militaries and is particularly distrusted by those opposed to the military, with armed resistance groups ____________________________________________ 186 R. Frankel, An Update on the Situation in Myanmar, Meta, 11 February 2021. International Crisis Group, Myanmar’s Military. 188 H.O. Faxon, K. Kintzi, V. Tran, K.Z. Wine, and S.Y. Htut, Organic Online Politics: Farmers, Facebook, and Myanmar’s Military Coup, Big Data and Society, 16 April 2023. 187 45