USDP members at work in the party’s Nay Pyi Taw office on July 24. (Thuya Zaw | Frontier) But the definitions of hate speech and fake news are highly contested, and USDP officials would not offer their own, making some details of the strategy unclear. If it is simply to counter what they deem to be disinformation, there is research to suggest it may backfire. A 2017 Council of Europe report found that, with online commenters often firmly entrenched in their positions, right or wrong, attempts to debunk misinformation often reinforce existing beliefs, rather than changing minds, and help fake news spread faster. It is also worth noting that half of the six campaigns Facebook has removed from its platform as examples of “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” – as covert disinformation campaigns are termed – were linked to the military.