5/22/22, 5:59 PM How Facebook’s Rise Fueled Chaos and Confusion in Myanmar | WIRED Protesters hold placards and chant during a demonstration against Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as she attends an event at the Guildhall in the City of London on May 8, 2017. CHRIS J RATCLIFFE/GETTY IMAGES “They started to panic and they did not know what to do,” says Tun, who left Deloitte last year. “He was quite worried.” Facebook does not maintain an office in Myanmar, and there was, according to Tun, confusion over how to reach officials at the company. Zaw Htay, who now serves at the spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's government, confirmed the phone call took place. Tun’s attempts to contact Facebook officials in the United States dragged into the night but were unsuccessful. He eventually fell asleep. Soon, a decision was made by the President’s Office to temporarily block access to Facebook in Mandalay, Zaw Htay says. The decision was the right one, he says, because it put a stop to the clashes. When Tun awoke the next morning, he had five or six emails from Facebook officials concerned over the site being unreachable, he says. (Five people, including a woman who admitted she was paid to make the false rape claim, were eventually sentenced to 21 years in prison for their roles in starting the riots.) O N J U LY 2 0, 2014, a little more than two weeks after the unrest, members of Myanmar’s budding tech scene gathered in a conference room at MICT Park, a badly dated office complex built in Yangon by the junta in a largely unsuccessful attempt to advance the country’s tech prowess. A panel discussion had been hastily arranged after the riots with the help of Tun, Zaw Htay, and others. The participants included representatives from Google, the Asia Foundation, and the government, but most in the audience had come to hear—and demand answers—from Mia Garlick. https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-and-confusion-in-myanmar/ 4/16