Analysis: Current Landscape of Hate Speech in Myanmar the accounts were the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and the military’s television networks, which were banned from Facebook to prevent “further inflaming of ethnic and religious tensions.”364 The great majority of content was taken down for “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” whereby Facebook found that seemingly independent news, entertainment, beauty, lifestyle, opinion, and informa- tional pages were in fact linked to the Myanmar military.365 Some of the most followed pages including: Sayama Lay Myah (Young Female Teachers); Pawh Pawh Pah Pah (Let’s Laugh Casually), Beauty and Classic; and We Love Myanmar. Altogether, the removed pages had about 16 million followers.366 Others interviewed for this report also described duplicate pages meant to look like real media sources or fake pages of militant Rohingya set up to make it seem as though Rohingya are violently retaliating, and pages established specifically to criticize prominent HRDs.367 For example, they describe how during the conflict with the AA, a duplicate AA account emerged.368 It looked, at first glance, to be identical to the official AA account down to the profile picture.369 The fake one, however, shared pictures and misinformation detailing the death of AA leadership and defeat at the hands of Tatmadaw.370 Challenges facing hate speech regulation on Facebook In April 2018, Facebook publicly released its Community Standards that moderators use to deter- mine content that violates its policies, including a three-tiered approach to identify hate speech and prioritize what is proactively filtered.371 The highest level, Tier I, covers violent or dehumanizing speech.372 Tier II includes statements of inferiority, disgust, or contempt of a protected group.373 Tier III comprises of calls for segregation or exclusion of a protected group.374 The company continues to update these standards through periodic reviews.375 Despite diligent monitoring attempts from CSOs and some remedial steps taken by Facebook, significant challenges remain for tracking and stopping hate speech on the platform.376 Ineffectiveness of Removal One major challenge has been that removing specific posts, accounts, or pages does not necessarily prevent further circulation of the posted content.377 For example, consultation participants noted that public figures such as the Director General of the State Counsellor Office, Zaw Htay, have been posting 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 news/2018/08/removing-myanmar-officials/. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. FGD (December 2019); YGN-R1-01, 7-8; MS-R1-02, 5-7. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Facebook, “Publishing Our Internal Enforcement Guidelines and Expanding Our Appeals Process,” April 24, 2018, https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/comprehensive-community-standards/. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Facebook, “Community Standards—Recent Updates—Hate Speech,” October 2019, https://www.facebook.com/ communitystandards/recentupdates/hate_speech. FGD (December 2019); Wong; Stecklow, “Why Facebook is Losing the War.” Ibid. 63