Victoire Rio The Role of Social Media in Fomenting Violence: Myanmar 13 Messenger: Facebook messenger is a critical means of communication in Myanmar. It is used as a prime alternative to traditional phone lines, SMS and emails and is widely believed to have been used to support communication between group members through both direct messages and large messenger threads. Secret Groups: Secret Facebook Groups are also believed to have played a central role, particularly in Ma Ba Tha’s coordination effort, enabling it to coordinate its activities, its trolling and its mass reporting campaigns as well as to store and exchange content quickly and easily. Facebook Events: Both Ma Ba Tha and the military have also made extensive use of Facebook’s event feature to organise rallies, demonstrations and protests. Besides helping them to promote events broadly, the feature is believed to have enabled these groups to track attendance, build their audience and further refine their targeting. Facebook Live: Ma Ba Tha has also been found to leverage the Facebook live feature as a way to broadcast and generate a visual (and shareable) archive of its events. Friend-ing: Finally, it is widely believed that both groups have capitalised on Myanmar users’ tendency to accept friend requests from people they do not know as part of their monitoring efforts as well as to engage potential new followers and supporters. A sense of impunity The widespread and sustained weaponisation of the Facebook platform in Myanmar was made possible by Facebook’s ‘hands off’ approach to moderation in the country. Sanctions were rare and, when applied, mostly addressed individual pieces of content which, by the time they were removed or demoted (48hrs +), had already achieved their intended impact. In rare cases where accounts or pages were disabled as a result of an investigation or repeated community standards violations, actors were able to find their way back to the platform. In most cases, they were able to do so using the same name and photo, which allowed them to quickly rebuild their following. Wirathu, who made the cover of Time magazine as “The Face of Buddhist Terror” in 2013 and was officially banned from preaching in 2017 for his widespread use of hate speech, for example, was able to create at least three successive profiles on the platform, with his last known official account only banned in January 2018. Facebook’s Response Absentee landlord Facebook has been referred to as an “absentee landlord” in the context of Myanmar. Despite repeated warnings around the abuse and weaponisation of its platform, starting in