Victoire Rio, an adviser at the Myanmar Tech Accountability Network, told us that well before the election in 2020, her group was raising red flags to YouTube about problematic activity on the platform, including the proliferation of channels amplifying pro-military disinformation. In one instance, she says, videos hosted on YouTube were linked to an email campaign impersonating, or “spoofing,” the accounts of election commission officials to add credibility to phony voter-fraud claims. Though YouTube had adopted a policy against false claims of widespread electoral fraud in the U.S., which the company has since expanded to Germany and Brazil, it has not applied the policy in Myanmar. Rio also expressed concern about the role of financially motivated actors who exploit YouTube videos about Myanmar and as a result spread falsehoods across the broader information ecosystem. Her research on a network of Cambodian and Vietnamese clickbait purveyors informed an extensive report by MIT Technology Review in 2021, which described how Google and Facebook monetization programs had the effect of amplifying disinformation: Opportunistic Cambodians and Vietnamese repost viral YouTube videos from Myanmar on blogs and Facebook, not for political purposes, but to monetize views. In some cases, footage that originally had been uploaded to YouTube as evidence of human rights violations was repurposed in this manner and, in the process, misled viewers into thinking that the abuses were happening again. This kind of profit-motivated manipulation of video content has inadvertently intensified the confusion and fear felt by Myanmar citizens who are bombarded with propaganda from their military rulers and other murky sources.85 YouTube says it is responding to problems in Myanmar when it discovers channels or content that violate its terms of service. It terminated a number of channels that MIT Technology Review brought to its attention in 2021. In the wake of the February 2021 coup and subsequent army crackdowns, YouTube told us that it has “removed 18 thousands of videos and hundreds of channels” for promoting violence or ethnic hatred. For example, in August 2021, it terminated 137 channels that were part of a coordinated Burmeselanguage campaign that supported the military coup.86 But Rio says that in Myanmar, the military and its allies often simply start new channels, or continue to exploit others that the company has not yet removed. “Instead of rooting them out, they are just addressing them one channel at a time or one video at a time,” says Rio. Like Mnemonic’s Kayyali, Rio believes that YouTube has invested inadequate resources to address these complex challenges. Dangerous exploitation of YouTube crops up in unexpected ways—in one instance, whipping up hostility to migrant workers from Myanmar who seek employment in neighboring Thailand. During the pandemic, a Thai civil society group called Social Media Monitoring for Peace pointed out a wave of hateful attacks by Thai people on YouTube and other platforms. One Thai YouTube commenter said: "Wherever you see Myanmar people, shoot them down.”87 “ The army coup was cheered by dozens of pro-military YouTube channels, some with millions of views, that spread falsehoods undermining the election in 2020 of a fragile civilian government, which was then swept aside by the military just a few months later. ” HOW YOUTUBE SPREADS HARMFUL CONTENT – AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT