Myanmar Government Blocks Website Exposing Military Corruption

The website for Justice for Myanmar, which is dedicated to exposing military corruption, was blocked by the country’s government for spreading fake news. Over 200 websites have been blocked in the past year.

Screenshot of the Justice for Myanmar homepage.

On Aug. 27, all mobile operators and service providers in Myanmar received a directive from the government to block the Justice for Myanmar website for purportedly spreading fake news. Justice for Myanmar was launched on April 28 by an anonymous group of activists aiming to expose military corruption and advocate for federal democracy and peace. Campaigning for Myanmar’s Nov. 8 general elections began a week after the shutdown, raising concerns that the government was attempting to silence scrutiny and criticism of the elections. 

In May, Justice for Myanmar exposed that two top government officials were also directors of Myanmar Economic Holdings Company Limited, a military-owned company, leading to both officials’ resignations from its board. More recently, Justice for Myanmar revealed that a construction company under contract for the government has ties to Lt. Gen. Soe Htut. The site also published allegations that a medical company offering Food and Drug Administration approvals is owned by the family of Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. 

The military controlled Myanmar for decades, until it was replaced by a civilian government in 2011. The current government is headed by Aung San Suu Kyi of the National League for Democracy (NLD), who serves as State Counsellor. She led the NLD to victory in 2015 during Myanmar’s first openly contested election in 25 years. Despite having a democratic ruler, Myanmar is not free from military rule. A 2008 constitutional provision still guarantees the military seats in parliament. One-quarter of parliamentary seats are held by the military, which also controls the country’s defense, border affairs and home affairs ministries.

Aung San Suu Kyi, once regarded as a prime example of a democratic leader, has been the target of international criticism in recent years for her handling of the Rohingya crisis and her persecution of media and activist groups. 

In the past year, Aung San Suu Kyi’s government has blocked over 200 websites for allegedly spreading fake news, using Section 77 of the Telecommunications Law. The section allows action to stop the spread of misinformation. Myanmar’s government received criticism earlier this year for limiting press freedom and the flow of information during the pandemic by blocking news sites. The government also imposed an internet blackout in nine townships in the Rakhine and Chin states and in April 2020 ordered a mass blocking of the websites of ethnic media organizations. These actions, as well as the shutdown of the Justice for Myanmar website just a week before campaigning for the general elections began, have been causes for concern from the media, community organizations and rights groups. 

Yadanar Maung, a Justice for Myanmar spokesperson, said in a recent press release that the group condemns “the Myanmar government’s attack on our right to freedom of expression and the people of Myanmar's right to information.” Telenor Myanmar, one of the service providers that received the directive to block the Justice for Myanmar site, has opened communication with the government to protest the blocking. A statement on Telenor Myanmar’s website urges the government “to increase transparency for the public” and asserts that the government’s directive does not respect the rights to freedom of expression or access to information. 

Many groups and individuals, including James Rodehaver of the U.N. Human Rights Office, have called for reform of the Telecommunications Law.

Rachel Lynch

is a student at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY currently taking a semester off. She plans to study Writing and Child Development. Rachel loves to travel and is inspired by the places she’s been and everywhere she wants to go. She hopes to educate people on social justice issues and the history and culture of travel destinations through her writing.

Bushfires, Bots and Arson Claims: Australia Flung in the Global Disinformation Spotlight

In the first week of 2020, hashtag #ArsonEmergency became the focal point of a new online narrative surrounding the bushfire crisis. 

The message: the cause is arson, not climate change.

Police and bushfire services (and some journalists) have contradicted this claim.

We studied about 300 Twitter accounts driving the #ArsonEmergency hashtag to identify inauthentic behaviour. We found many accounts using #ArsonEmergency were behaving “suspiciously”, compared to those using #AustraliaFire and #BushfireAustralia. 

Accounts peddling #ArsonEmergency carried out activity similar to what we’ve witnessed in past disinformation campaigns, such as the coordinated behaviour of Russian trolls during the 2016 US presidential election. 

Bots, trolls and trollbots

The most effective disinformation campaigns use bot and troll accounts to infiltrate genuine political discussion, and shift it towards a different “master narrative”.

Bots and trolls have been a thorn in the side of fruitful political debate since Twitter’s early days. They mimic genuine opinions, akin to what a concerned citizen might display, with a goal of persuading others and gaining attention. 

Bots are usually automated (acting without constant human oversight) and perform simple functions, such as retweeting or repeatedly pushing one type of content. 

Troll accounts are controlled by humans. They try to stir controversy, hinder healthy debate and simulate fake grassroots movements. They aim to persuade, deceive and cause conflict.

We’ve observed both troll and bot accounts spouting disinformation regarding the bushfires on Twitter. We were able to distinguish these accounts as being inauthentic for two reasons. 

First, we used sophisticated software tools including tweetbotornot, Botometer, and Bot Sentinel. 

There are various definitions for the word “bot” or “troll”. Bot Sentinel says:

Propaganda bots are pieces of code that utilize Twitter API to automatically follow, tweet, or retweet other accounts bolstering a political agenda. Propaganda bots are designed to be polarizing and often promote content intended to be deceptive… Trollbot is a classification we created to describe human controlled accounts who exhibit troll-like behavior. 

Some of these accounts frequently retweet known propaganda and fake news accounts, and they engage in repetitive bot-like activity. Other trollbot accounts target and harass specific Twitter accounts as part of a coordinated harassment campaign. Ideology, political affiliation, religious beliefs, and geographic location are not factors when determining the classification of a Twitter account.

These machine learning tools compared the behaviour of known bots and trolls with the accounts tweeting the hashtags #ArsonEmergency, #AustraliaFire, and #BushfireAustralia. From this, they provided a “score” for each account suggesting how likely it was to be a bot or troll account. 

We also manually analysed the Twitter activity of suspicious accounts and the characteristics of their profiles, to validate the origins of #ArsonEmergency, as well as the potential motivations of the accounts spreading the hashtag.

Who to blame?

Unfortunately, we don’t know who is behind these accounts, as we can only access trace data such as tweet text and basic account information. 

This graph shows how many times #ArsonEmergency was tweeted between December 31 last year and January 8 this year:

On the vertical axis is the number of tweets over time which featured #ArsonEmergency. On January 7, there were 4726 tweets. Author provided

Previous bot and troll campaigns have been thought to be the work of foreign interference, such as Russian trolls, or PR firms hired to distract and manipulate voters. 

The New York Times has also reported on perceptions that media magnate Rupert Murdoch is influencing Australia’s bushfire debate.f

Weeding-out inauthentic behaviour

In late November, some Twitter accounts began using #ArsonEmergency to counter evidence that climate change is linked to the severity of the bushfire crisis.

Below is one of the earliest examples of an attempt to replace #ClimateEmergency with #ArsonEmergency. The accounts tried to get #ArsonEmergency trending to drown out dialogue acknowledging the link between climate change and bushfires.

We suspect the origins of the #ArsonEmergency debacle can be traced back to a few accounts. Author provided

The hashtag was only tweeted a few times in 2019, but gained traction this year in a sustained effort by about 300 accounts.

A much larger portion of bot and troll-like accounts pushed #ArsonEmergency, than they did #AustraliaFire and #BushfireAustralia. 

The narrative was then adopted by genuine accounts who furthered its spread. 

On multiple occasions, we noticed suspicious accounts countering expert opinions while using the #ArsonEmergency hashtag.

The inauthentic accounts engaged with genuine users in an effort to persuade them. author provided

Bad publicity

Since media coverage has shone light on the disinformation campaign, #ArsonEmergency has gained even more prominence, but in a different light. 

Some journalists are acknowledging the role of disinformation bushfire crisis – and countering narrative the Australia has an arson emergency. However, the campaign does indicate Australia has a climate denial problem. 

What’s clear to me is that Australia has been propelled into the global disinformation battlefield. 

Keep your eyes peeled

It’s difficult to debunk disinformation, as it often contains a grain of truth. In many cases, it leverages people’s previously held beliefs and biases. 

Humans are particularly vulnerable to disinformation in times of emergency, or when addressing contentious issues like climate change.

Online users, especially journalists, need to stay on their toes. 

The accounts we come across on social media may not represent genuine citizens and their concerns. A trending hashtag may be trying to mislead the public.

Right now, it’s more important than ever for us to prioritise factual news from reliable sources – and identify and combat disinformation. The Earth’s future could depend on it.

Timothy Graham is a Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology

Tobias R. Keller is a Visiting Postdoc, Queensland University of Technology

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION