5/22/22, 5:59 PM How Facebook’s Rise Fueled Chaos and Confusion in Myanmar | WIRED unsuccessful. Soon, armed men were marauding through the streets of the royal capital on motorbikes and by foot wielding machetes and sticks. Rioters torched cars and ransacked shops. A curfew was imposed in the city and surrounding townships. Authorities were fearful that the violence would spread to other towns that had seen outbreaks of religious violence the previous year. The mayhem did not spread, but during the multi-day melee in Mandalay two men—one Muslim and one Buddhist—were killed and around 20 others were injured. The unrest was the latest in a string of flare-ups, often violent, between minority Muslims and Buddhists in the majority-Buddhist country of around 51 million since restrictions on free speech and the internet were steadily loosened starting in 2010. Waves of violence broke out in the western Rakhine state in 2012 between Muslims and Buddhists, leaving nearly 200 dead and displaced some 140,000, mainly Rohingya Muslims and reverberated across the country in the months and years that followed. A firefighter sprays a smoldering building in the wake of clashes between Buddhists and Muslims that left at least 20 people dead in a the central Myanmar town of Meikhtila in 2013. KHIN MAUNG WIN/AP https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-and-confusion-in-myanmar/ 2/16