the people,” although this power was never intended to be used to block all content.117 The law does not explicitly hold intermediaries liable for content, but some provisions are vague and could feasibly be interpreted to justify content removal.118 There are also no avenues for appealing restrictions,119 and the only potential safeguard against abuse, the MCRC, has still not been established (see A5). In the absence of the MCRC, the PTD retains control over content restrictions. The PTD does not publish procedural information on how or when any such decisions are made, or by whom. Military directives— and government directives before the coup—that order internet shutdowns and website blocks have not been published, and users have had to rely on telecommunications companies and civil society testing for more information about content restrictions.120 The orders have become so common that many are conveyed to providers by telephone rather than through official channels.121 Recipients of directives are unwilling to publicize the orders’ exact terms due to the risk of legal liability, including potential violations of the Official Secrets Act, and there have been no reported legal challenges to test the directives’ lawfulness in courts. The only ISP that had been documenting and publishing the existence of restrictive directives following the coup, Telenor, ceased those activities on February 14, citing threats of license revocation and intimidation of staff.122 In 2018, following complaints about its content moderation from within Myanmar and elsewhere, Facebook increased its moderation activity, expanded its appeals process for account and page takedowns,123 and established a self-regulatory Oversight Board.124 According to the company, it subsequently removed hundreds of Facebook and Instagram pages and accounts—with millions of followers—that had originated within and outside of Myanmar and were found to have violated the platforms’ community standards.125 Removals in 2018 included the accounts and pages of top military commander Min Aung Hlaing, other military leaders, and the military’s Myawaddy television network,126 as well as accounts associated with the Buddhist ultranationalist group Ma Ba Tha.127 After the coup, Facebook removed or reduced the distribution of many pages run by the military or military companies, including Tatmadaw True News Information Team, MRTV, and MRTV Live.128 The pages and accounts of various ethnic rebel groups have also been removed by Facebook in recent years, as the company deemed them “dangerous organizations.”129 This designation meant that any content supporting the groups could also be removed once identified. An unintended consequence of Facebook’s increased moderation activity has been the removal of legitimate content.130 Some activists continue to argue that some of Facebook’s removals have compromised the public’s right to information about important national stakeholders, and that they have swept up a wide range of valid content, including commentary on and documentation of human rights violations.131 For example, certain media outlets, journalists, and human rights defenders have alleged that their content was wrongfully removed, particularly journalistic reporting about banned organizations.132 Despite requests from civil society,133 Facebook is only minimally transparent about its restrictions. Some in Myanmar’s civil society sector suspect that this opacity masks significant internal problems, such as poorly trained staff who lack contextual and language expertise, problematic and insufficient algorithms,134 and discriminatory decisionmaking.135 The Oversight Board has agreed to review one case in which an appellant challenged Facebook’s decision to remove a post criticizing the postcoup environment on the grounds that it violated the platform’s hate speech policy.136 A 2020 survey of journalists conducted by Free Expression Myanmar found that Facebook had warned a third of the participants that their journalistic content violated the platform’s community standards.137 Of those surveyed, 15 percent said they had content removed. Since the coup, several news outlets have reported receiving Facebook warnings after they posted photos of murdered protesters.138 In addition to Facebook, video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok have increased their content removals since the coup (see B5).139 YouTube has removed at least five military-controlled channels, including the state-owned MRTV and the militaryowned Myawaddy Media, MWD Variety, and MWD Myanmar.140 Following international media attention,141 TikTok slowly took action to remove some of the extremely violent videos posted by soldiers on the platform, many of which threatened peaceful protesters with various weapons and methods of murder.142 In one video, viewed 180,000 times, a soldier Free Expression Myanmar (FEM) and Freedom House - Freedom of the Net: Myanmar - အင်တာနက်ေပ*တွင် လွတ်လပ်မ/ - ြမန်မာ2ိ4င်ငံ - Page 12