9/24/21, 8:03 PM Hard talk or hate speech? Outlet spreads disinformation and bigotry under guise of political commentary | Frontier Myanmar Facebook says it has removed the entire page for repeatedly violating its community standards. In one of its most egregious examples of spreading disinformation, MHT published a provocative video that it claimed contained footage found on a computer belonging to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. In 2016 and 2017, ARSA attacked Myanmar police outposts, prompting a Tatmadaw campaign against the Rohingya that some have described as a genocide. The MHT video claimed ARSA is a threat to Myanmar’s sovereignty and the group was training to invade Rakhine State. Frontier found that much of the footage was drawn from videos first posted by Mr Rick Heizman, an openly anti-Muslim campaigner who has claimed that Rakhine State is the target of a global Muslim conspiracy to destroy Buddhism, and once called for 800,000 Rohingya to be expelled to Bangladesh. The contents of the original Heizman videos could not be verified, and there was no explanation for how he obtained the footage. It had over 100,000 views and 7,000 shares when Frontier reported it to Facebook, which then removed the post. Facebook removed the video under its Myanmar-specific election period misinformation policy, finding that the content has the potential to either suppress the vote or damage the integrity of the election. The company has special policies that apply only in Myanmar and reflect the country’s volatile history, allowing it to remove misinformation or “unverifiable rumors” even if they don’t specifically violate voter interference policies. Facebook said Heizman was originally banned for various policy violations in 2018 and has been banned multiple times since then while trying to rejoin the platform. He has now moved on to YouTube, where Frontier found he had posted multiple examples of blatant disinformation, including a doctored video. In another example, MHT spread a false rumour that a poem written by State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had been plagiarised from a Russian poet, Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky. Despite multiple fact-checkers debunking the story and Frontier reporting the post to Facebook, it remained accessible on the social media platform until the entire page was removed. Despite being disinformation aimed at discrediting the leader of the country’s leading political party, Facebook said the post wasn’t specifically election-related and didn’t meet criteria for removal. https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/hard-talk-or-hate-speech-outlet-spread-disinformation-and-bigotry-under-guise-of-political-commentary/ 2/9