9/24/21, 7:46 PM Investigation: A network of pro-military Facebook pages in Myanmar with Russian connections | by Aung Kaung Myat | annie lab | Medium A team member of Myanmar Breaking News (left) and his profile info (right) Imposter names Three pages used to have different names before the administrators settled on the current ones. Presumably, the initial page names were made to trick users into believing these were the official Facebook pages of a known news organization. “News,” the page with the largest followers (1.3 million likes), was created in February 2017 as “7Days Daily News.” The name sounded a lot like one of the biggest newspapers in Myanmar, 7Day Daily. Nine months later, its name was changed to “Unofficial: 7Days Daily News.” The page changed its name again to simply “News” toward the end of 2017. During the initial nine months, the page garnered over 650,000 followers with an average monthly growth of 18%, according to page data obtained for this investigation. The growth rate dropped to 2% after the deceptive name that implied a relationship with an established newspaper company was removed. Similar tactics have been adopted by two other pages. Both impersonated 7Day Daily. Myanmar Breaking News was called “7Days News” for seven months. Its average monthly page growth was 40% during that period, which came down to just 1% after the name change. Sun Thit Lwin — Daily News has also used the name “7days daily news” in 2017 for a month. Coordinated behaviors of cross-posting https://medium.com/annie-lab/investigation-a-network-of-pro-military-facebook-pages-in-myanmar-with-russian-connections-f6c15af3d26a 4/11