ISSUES SIGN UP NOW In Myanmar, messaging and social media app Telegram has become a new home for pro-military disinformation outlets and hate spreaders that have been banned from Facebook. (AFP) Channelling hate and disinformation: Myanmar’s bad actors move to Telegram SEPTEMBER 15, 2021    Since being banned from Facebook, some of the most prominent spreaders of hate speech and disinformation have moved to Telegram, and fact-checkers say the messaging app is doing little to regulate its platform. By ANDREW NACHEMSON | FRONTIER Faced with increasing restrictions and closer scrutiny on Facebook – and in some cases outright bans – some of Myanmar’s most prominent peddlers of pro-military disinformation and hate speech have turned to the encrypted messaging service Telegram to spread their propaganda. Ostensibly a private messaging app, Telegram has grown in popularity thanks to “channels” that users can subscribe to for regular updates from other accounts. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, where the default is for posts to be public, Telegram posts can only be seen by a channel’s subscribers. Myanmar Hard Talk (MHT), which was banned from Facebook on October 23, 2020, has found a new home on Telegram. A Frontier investigation at the time found that the outlet was sharing disinformation and hate speech targeting the Rohingya Muslim minority and the National League for Democracy. The NLD was overthrown in a military coup on February 1 after winning a landslide victory in the November 2020 general election.