The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South CHAPTER 6 Reclaiming the Missing Story: Platform Accountability In Myanmar By Htaike Aung Context When Sarah Wynn-Williams’ book “Careless People” (WynnWilliams, 2025) came out, I felt two things at once. Relief, because Myanmar’s story of digital harm was being recognized in a global narrative. And unease, because the way it was written carried familiar traces of omission. Her chapter on Myanmar is already reaching a wide audience, shaping how others will understand our history with social media. But the picture is incomplete. This is not a book review. I do not want to spend these pages dissecting her arguments line by line. What I want is to tell the part of the story that was left out, the one lived by those of us in Myanmar who were already watching, warning, and working long before the crisis became front-page news. For me, this is about memory, responsibility, and care. The omissions in that chapter reflect a larger pattern: the labor of local communities, especially in fragile contexts like Myanmar, often gets erased or reduced to footnotes. Yet we were there from the very beginning, doing the work of monitoring, documenting, and sounding alarms. In the early 2010s, I co-founded the Myanmar ICT for Development Organization (MIDO), the country’s first digital rights group. Those were years when Myanmar was only just stepping into the digital age. We saw both the excitement and the dangers. Facebook was opening new doors, but it was also sowing division at a speed we had not seen before. We tried to make the world listen. Often, it felt like we were speaking into silence. This essay is my attempt to fill in the missing threads, not with anger, but with care. Care for memory, for those who labored unseen, and for the lessons still waiting to be learned. 98 Reclaiming the Missing Story: Platform Accountability In Myanmar Reclaiming the Missing Story: Platform Accountability In Myanmar Facebook was opening new doors, but it was also sowing division at a speed we had not seen before. 99