Following the military coup in Myanmar on February 1, the situation on the ground remains volatile and Facebook is adapting to meet these events.
Our focus is three-fold: First, do everything we can to prevent online content from being linked to offline harm and keep our community safe. Second, protect freedom of expression for the tens of millions of Myanmar citizens who rely on Facebook now more than ever. Third, ensure that Facebook, Messenger and our family of apps stay online as a source of information and means of communication.
Facebook is treating the situation in Myanmar as an emergency. Our Integrity Operations Center has been running around the clock since the coup began. It brings together subject matter experts from across the company, including Myanmar nationals with native language skills, so we can monitor and respond to any threats in real time.
Beyond that, we’ve put several measures in place to support our community in Myanmar during this time.
Key among these is the decision to significantly reduce the distribution of all content on Facebook Pages and profiles run by the Myanmar Military (“Tatmadaw”) that have continued to spread misinformation. In line with our global policies on repeat offenders of misinformation, we will also no longer be recommending them to people. Among other military-run accounts, these measures apply to the Tatmadaw Information Team’s Facebook Page and to Tatmadaw spokesperson Brigadier-General Zaw Min Tun’s Facebook account. This same action will be applied to any additional pages that the military controls that repeatedly violate our misinformation policies.
We have also indefinitely suspended the ability for Myanmar government agencies to send content removal requests to Facebook through our normal channels reserved for authorities around the world.
Simultaneously, we are protecting content, including political speech, that allows the people of Myanmar to express themselves and to show the world what is transpiring inside their country.
We’re also taking the following additional steps:
- Continuing to enforce our policies on Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) to combat influence operations when we find networks we previously removed try to re-establish a presence on Facebook. We’re doing this through a combination of automated and manual detection. This includes enforcement actions we’ve taken during the past week against accounts connected to our past takedowns associated with the Myanmar military.
- Enforcing our Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy to remove groups and individuals who seek to incite violence.
- Providing extra protections for journalists, civil society activists, human rights defenders, and deposed political leaders to prevent online threats against them; and helping anyone who reasonably fears detention to secure their Facebook accounts and data from unauthorized access.
- Continuing to proactively remove content that violates our Community Standards, especially hate speech, incitement to violence, bullying and harassment, and misinformation that can lead to physical harm.
- Reducing the distribution of content in Myanmar that likely violates our hate speech and incitement policies, measures first taken during the November elections, as well as content that explicitly praises or supports the coup.
- Removing misinformation claiming that there was widespread fraud or foreign interference in Myanmar’s November election.
- Removing content that includes calls to bring weapons to any location across Myanmar.
These efforts build on our work since 2018 to keep people safe and reduce the risk of political violence in Myanmar. Last year, we worked to protect Myanmar’s 2020 election. We’ve also worked to reduce hate speech, ban certain individuals and organisations and partner with civil society to address challenges on the ground in Myanmar. While this work is never complete, we’ve made important progress. Between October and December last year, we took action on 350,000 pieces of content containing hate speech in Myanmar, of which 99% were detected and removed before anyone reported it to us.
We are closely monitoring the rapidly evolving situation in Myanmar, and are in close communication with governments, institutions and non-governmental organizations that care deeply about Myanmar’s future. We are also monitoring the impact of sanctions that are likely to be imposed in the coming days, and exploring additional measures that we will share soon.
We join with governments, the UN, and civil society around the world in calling for internet services in Myanmar to be restored immediately so that the people there can communicate with loved ones, express their political views, access important information, and run their businesses.
We remain vigilant to emerging trends and will not hesitate to take additional measures as appropriate.
