12 Policy Brief No. 78 Toda Peace Institute Besides providing a platform for widespread propaganda campaigns, Facebook provided a unique tool to monitor, discredit and attack critics and opposing views. Aside from the very real physical and mental risks to the targets, this helped create a climate of selfcensorship, which further enabled the military and Ma Ba Tha to dominate the narrative and shape public opinion. Monitoring: Facebook provides a unique window into the life, thoughts, activities and interests of its users. Though search features were progressively restricted following global privacy concerns, both groups are believed to have made use of the platform to map, monitor and target critics. Trolling: Trolls, widely believed to be affiliated with the Military or Ma Ba Tha, were also regularly found commenting on high visibility pages and groups. They often worked in “brigades”, taking over the comment section of a particular post and working in coordination to discredit any criticism and/or attack the critic. Mass reporting: Besides discrediting content through trolling, military and Ma Ba Tha trolls are also widely believed to have engaged in mass reporting campaigns against their critics, in an effort to get their content or account banned by Facebook. Doxxing: Another strategy used to deter critical posting has included publishing misinformation against vocal critics along with their private information. Such posts have included information such as the critic’s profile link, their photo, their address, their ID number or their religion. Some posts have gone as far as to include identifiable information about family members. Direct Messaging: A number of activists and journalists have also reported being threatened over direct messages, sometimes by multiple accounts at once. Hacking: Besides being verbally abused and harassed, critics have also been the target of hacking attacks, designed to either discredit them, reveal their personal information, or gain access to their network. Legal threat: Some critics have also been the victims of legal attacks, leveraging different articles within Myanmar law that criminalise defamation. One of the most notable examples is the case against the editor of Myanmar Now, an independent investigative media, who was sued by a Ma Ba Tha sympathiser for a Facebook post which put into question Wirathu’s monk status. Coordination Beyond providing a platform for propaganda, and a tool for surveillance and targeted attacks, Facebook provided the backbone infrastructure which helped coordinate these groups’ activities, and facilitate their outreach and—in the case of Ma Ba Tha—their fundraising: