ASIAN ETHNICITY 7 Lisu and Naga. An interview with Facebook’s Myanmar technical and coordination team was also conducted through Facebook’s virtual meeting platform on 17 December 2020. The discussion focused on the rationale behind the selection of ‘Facebook languages,’ and various kinds of support provided by Facebook to these languages. The Facebook team provided additional written responses through email correspondence. The study also carried out a content analysis of online media by twelve ethnic minority groups represented in the interviews. These ethnic news media outlets were identified through search engines on Facebook and through the recommendations of respondents. Ethnic media Facebook pages with a significant number of ‘likes’ and followers were searched and reviewed. All respondent identities have been kept confidential for their safety. The research was reviewed and approved by the UMass Lowell Institutional Review Board. Findings Facebook language policies and practices Of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken in the world, only 111 have been conferred the status of a ‘Facebook Language,’ defined here as languages officially supported by the platform’s mobile and desktop portals.46 Twenty-nine of these Facebook languages can be identified as officially recognized minority languages in various countries. The largest share of these minority languages, 11 out of 29, are from Europe, followed by India, which alone has nine minority languages recognized as Facebook languages. The Facebook team has confirmed that Burmese (Myanmar) is the only available Facebook language among all Myanmar’s myriad languages.47 While the team was unable to divulge a comprehensive list of reasons why certain languages are chosen as Facebook languages, they did mention that official and popular languages tend to receive priority in their selection. The Facebook team also noted that Facebook has provided various functionalities for these chosen languages, including automatic transla­ tion, and detection of contents that violate Facebook policies (such as hate speech).48 Thus Facebook languages seem to have two distinct advantages. First, the whole Facebook page setup is made available in any one of these languages, and second, uploaded posts or status updates written in any Facebook language can be automatically translated into other Facebook languages and vice versa. Some critics thus contend that Facebook’s preference for Burmese contributes to ‘Burmanization’ by perpetuating the Myanmar government’s exclusive language policy, further marginalizing other minority groups.49 Such criticism may be misleading since it does not take into consideration other factors that constrain the choices of minority language speakers in Myanmar. A combination of reasons including official language policies, status, demographic, institutional support, and home and neighborhood environments, influence the reasons why many members of minority ethnic groups in Myanmar (particularly younger generations) are unable to speak and write their languages, or may lack both positive attitudes toward their own languages and motivation to learn and utilize them. As a consequence, even ethnic education systems operating outside of government