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The Role of Social Media and Disruptive Technologies in Post-Coup Democracy Activism

Jaydn (pseudonym)

Consulting firm director, conducting political and business analysis for international companies in Myanmar

Monique Skidmore

Professor, Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University, Australia

Cecile Medail

Visiting Fellow, Department of Social and Political Change, The Australian National University

Abstract

This chapter reflects upon the effectiveness of censorship and surveillance technologies in asserting totalitarian control versus the power of disruptive cyber technologies to overthrow dictatorships. From hacktivism, to doxing, to cryptocurrency donations, to financial bond sales and ‘click-to-donate’ websites, a new generation of IT-savvy democracy activists in Myanmar are fighting for their right to live in a democratic state by harnessing their skills to disrupt authoritarian control. In a context in which the country’s economy has become dependent upon the internet, app-based payment and communication technologies, we argue that the junta is struggling to maintain and extend its control of this new sphere of conflict. By contrast, a creative and diverse use of digital technologies enables the anti-coup movement to disrupt the military’s repressive attempts to conquer the virtual battlefield.

Fighting in cyberspace

The nature of civil war is fundamentally changing due to repressed populations having widespread access to cyberspace and state deployment of online encryption and surveillance technologies (e.g. Ethiopia; ICG 2021). Myanmar is the first East Asian conflict zone in which social media and encryption technologies may be deciding factors. This chapter analyses the deployment and implications of new technologies by a military state with techno-totalitarian ambitions, and the resistance movement’s adoption of disruptive technologies.

The 1 February 2021 military coup in Myanmar has been fiercely resisted in urban and village battlefields across the country. Meanwhile, a third territory has opened up in this fight for democracy: cyberspace. The Myanmar military has demonstrated totalitarian ambition for decades, waging physical and psychological warfare to establish authoritarian structures of control over its people. Totalitarianism is at the heart of the Myanmar military mindset (Selth 2021; Skidmore 2003). The logic of totalitarianism is one of fighting a continual war of attrition of the spirit—of placing physical and psychological boundaries around a population so that, over time, resistance is reduced to easily extinguished spot fires by an ever more experienced apparatus of repression (Skidmore 2004, 2007).

After the reprise of liberalisations in the Burman heartlands (but not borderlands) over the past decade, the military have sought to rapidly extend their control over cyberspace. They have doubled down on these efforts since the coup and the unexpected resistance they have received from their captive population. The coup marks a shift in the military’s online strategy. No longer able to use social media to promote its authoritarian agenda, Myanmar’s military, led by the State Administration Council (SAC), is now rapidly deploying the internet as an extension of the existing battlefields in which physical and psychological warfare are waged. Since the coup, a contest between the latest encryption and cybersecurity surveillance technologies has become one of several new frontiers.

The widespread availability and use of the internet and social media apps constitutes a main difference between the post-coup mass resistance and the 2007 Saffron Revolution, which was the last time the population sought to overthrow the military junta (Skidmore & Wilson 2008). The internet has played an increasingly crucial role in facilitating Burmese pro-democracy diaspora activism since the 1990s (Danitz & Strobel 1999), and in disseminating vital information securely via nascent online platforms during the Saffron Revolution (Chowdhury 2008; Brough & Li 2013).

The phenomenon of democracy communication and mobilisation against authoritarian rulers has been documented in Africa and the Middle East, and it is not surprising that a new generation of Burmese have turned to apps and the internet to organise resistance. Since the coup, cyberspace has become a critical workplace for many of the key actors at the forefront of the current resistance, notably the National Unity Government (NUG), the People’s Defence Forces (PDFs) and the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM). This chapter examines the use of new technologies employed by civil and armed resistance groups against the junta for their utility in allowing more effective organisation and communication. We see the strategic use of disruptive technologies to finance revolution and to counter the regime’s fearmongering through propaganda as being both novel and potentially the most effective form of resistance to date.

The use of Facebook as a new terrain of authoritarian control

Facebook provides a good illustration of the junta’s use of cyberspace to expand its authoritarian control. Its role has changed from an unregulated channel for military propaganda to a temporary platform of resistance against the coup. Facebook’s efforts to stop hate speech and deplatform the military after the coup eventually blunted the junta’s online strategy, which rapidly shifted to restriction and repression.

Myanmar is the East Asian nation that was most quickly dominated by Facebook. The rapid uptake occurred in a similar fashion to the extraordinarily fast adoption of mobile phone telephony from 2013. Akin only to North Korea, until 2011, mobile phone subscriptions in Myanmar were between one and two per 100 persons (ITU 2013) with a cost of over USD3,000 for a single subscription (Petulla 2013). When Ooredoo then Telenor were given network licences in 2013, subscriptions fell to USD1.50—and Ooredoo sold 1 million subscriptions in three weeks, while Telenor sold 500,000 (Economist 2015; Ling et al. 2015).

Similarly, the Facebook platform rapidly became very powerful in Myanmar: by 2021, Facebook users represented 51.5 per cent of the population with 28.7 million users, 12.4 million being between 25 and 34 years of age (NapoleonCat 2021). Considering the levels of poverty, internet connectivity and remoteness of parts of the country, this is an extraordinary statistic. Accounting for over 93 per cent of all internet traffic in April 2022, Facebook enjoys a unique level of popularity and a quasi-monopoly on social media use and information sharing (Statcounter 2022). In 2016, the global body representing mobile operators found that in Myanmar many people considered Facebook as their entry point for online information and perceived postings as news (Hogan & Safi 2018). For the average Myanmar phone user, Facebook is synonymous with the internet and most people do not use internet browsers to search for information. Such success is largely due to Facebook’s quick development of a Burmese language version and the fact that Facebook was typically pre-installed on phones, and that some phone plans did not charge for time spent on Facebook.

The changing role of the platform during Myanmar’s quasi-democratic period has been discussed elsewhere (Tønnesson, Min Zaw Oo & Ne Lynn Aung 2022). In this section, we look at Facebook as a case study of the military’s expansion of its authoritarian control over cyberspace. Facebook is now at the centre of the junta’s repression, censorship and surveillance efforts deployed to impose its authoritarian control over cyberspace and attempts to defeat the resistance movement’s free access to information and its potential for digital disruption.

The centrality of Facebook throughout Myanmar society

During Myanmar’s quasi-democratic period, widespread access to smartphones and the rapid growth of internet use enabled a broad range of actors to use Facebook as their primary channel of communication. Media outlets, the general public, Buddhist figures, and military and government officials, as well as minority ethnic armed organisations, all began posting on Facebook. As a central forum of discussion that has also become a main outlet for traditional media, Facebook has allowed a broad spectrum of people to engage with social and political issues, offering them a new way to access information, express their opinions and connect with others.

However, the platform has also contributed to the polarisation and reinforcement of pre-existing opinions among communities sharing the same interests (McCarthy 2018). Facebook facilitated the spread of ultra-nationalist sentiment reflected in leading monk U Wirathu’s sermons, supported the propagation of negative prejudice towards Muslim men (McCarthy & Menager 2017) and enabled the production of narratives of fear and Buddhist–Muslim antagonisms (Schissler 2015). The platform eventually played a major role in the spread of hate speech, enabling users to participate in the co-production of nationalism and the construction of a potential Muslim threat (Prasse-Freeman 2021).

The pace of social media’s spread in the 2010s is also reflected in the way government authorities communicated with the public. The use of official social media channels by high-level military and civilian government offices to promote their narratives became the norm. Facebook, in particular, became the main platform for partisan political communication used by the government and its supporters (Aung Khant 2017; Dowling 2019; Nyi Nyi Kyaw 2019). Finally, ethnic armed groups also use Facebook as a tool of communication with their constituents to mobilise support and legitimise their role. For some armed groups, such as the Arakan Army, their intelligence gathering and successful military operations against Myanmar’s armed forces relied heavily on social media until the army pushed the civilian government to impose the world’s longest internet shutdown between June 2019 and February 2021, in Rakhine and Chin states (Tønnesson, Min Zaw Oo & Ne Lynn Aung 2022; Kyaw Hsan Hlaing & Fishbein 2021).

Military Facebook: Promoting the authoritarian agenda

The army’s psychological warfare department is believed to have trained hundreds of officers to run multiple Facebook accounts, attracting followers and spreading fake news to foment religious and racial crises. Officials of the Thein Sein government used posts from the minister of information—known as ‘the Minister of Facebook’—refuting allegations of human rights abuses in order to spread hate speech (Irrawaddy 2018). In 2014, U Wirathu, the notoriously anti-Muslim monk leader of the Mabatha movement, shared a Facebook post with fabricated accusations of rape that went viral, resulting in another incident of intercommunal violence.

The fact that the NLD government relied on Facebook for their own partisan political communication represented a great challenge to the regulation and sanction of fake news in Myanmar (Nyi Nyi Kyaw 2019). Senior officials, including the military leadership and civilian wing of the government, did not persuasively condemn the Buddhist-nationalist narrative in their official media outlets or on their Facebook accounts; neither did they use the 2013 Telecommunication Law to charge individuals involved in promoting religious hate speech, such as the extremist monk U Wirathu (Fink 2018). By contrast, authorities used this law just before the 2020 election to prosecute hundreds of Facebook users for mocking Senior General Min Aung Hlaing (Yan Naung Oak & Brooten 2019).

During the peak of military and civilian violence against Muslims in 2016 and 2017, hate speech on Facebook multiplied and socially licensed the brutal military operations that led to the displacement of 700,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh. The crackdown on the Rohingya was supported by top Myanmar officials, including the leader of the military, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and the leader of the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, who asserted that testimonies from refugee camps and the international depiction of the crisis were biased. This claim was reinforced by viral posts on social media (Kinseth 2019). Since state media and Buddhist-nationalist Facebook pages only relayed the displacement of Buddhists and Hindus, many citizens expressed support on Facebook for the counterinsurgency operations against Rohingya militants (Fink 2018).

The end of impunity and the blunting of the junta’s online strategy

In early 2018, Facebook was in the spotlight for spreading hate speech against the Rohingya minority, as investigators from the UN Human Rights Council’s Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar indicated that social media, which in Myanmar is Facebook, played a ‘determining role’ in the level of conflict within the public (Miles 2018). The Fact-Finding Mission report, released later in the year, described Facebook as ‘slow and ineffective’ at stopping hate speech (HRC 2018).

Soon after Facebook’s role was first officially criticised, and as a result of pressure from digital rights activists, the platform took some steps to actively remove hate speech and ban military officials.¹ By August 2018, 18 Facebook accounts, and 52 Facebook pages representing almost 12 million followers, were removed. This ban included the account of Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of the coup, and the armed forces’ Myawaddy television channel. By the end of the year, another 438 pages, 145 accounts and 17 groups were removed for being linked to the military (Meta 2018).² According to Frontier Myanmar (2018), taking the unprecedentedly popular Facebook platform away from top army officials and outlets represented the strongest punishment the international community could hope to inflict.

However, such measures had a limited impact, as the armed forces remained in control of other pages, such as the Ministry of Defence page, and could possibly use other pages managed by the civilian government to spread its propaganda (Frontier Myanmar 2018).

In the weeks following the coup, Facebook banned the remaining military state and media pages, groups and accounts, including the Ministry of Defence page, as well as ads from commercial entities linked to the armed forces, which were eventually removed at the end of 2021. The banning of these military-linked businesses from the platform occurred just after a group of Rohingya refugees filed a lawsuit against Facebook for allowing the spread of hate speech, which led to large-scale violence against the ethnic minority group (Milmo 2021). Despite these moves, a report released in March 2022 revealed that Facebook was still approving ads with hate speech content inciting violence against the Rohingya (GW 2022).

Nevertheless, ending years of military use of the platform with impunity, Facebook’s deplatforming of Myanmar’s armed forces blunted the junta’s online strategy by limiting its outreach capacity while bolstering the anti-coup movement. As the chapter will develop further, activists have used Facebook extensively to mobilise people, organise protests, urge civil servants to join the CDM, fundraise, document military abuses, share information and encouragements or give advice on protest tactics and safety. Countless users have changed their profile pictures to express their support for the NUG. The coup thus marked a huge change in the military’s online strategy: instead of using Facebook to spread its propaganda, the junta started restricting and punishing its use.

Post-coup military crackdown on social media and internet access

The junta’s subsequent attempts to control the virtual battlefield through internet shutdowns, the establishment of its own intranet with limited services, and its increased surveillance and repression of groups and individuals significantly impacted social media use and Facebook use in particular.

After seizing power, the SAC enacted amendments to the Electronic Transactions Law to allow them to access user data and then sue prominent opponents (HRW 2021). It also sought to win the communications battle by temporarily shutting down access to the internet. During the first few hours of the coup, the SAC completely shut down the internet in Myanmar. This effectively cut the flow of information via social media to prevent the organisation of a resistance. However, this quickly resulted in chaos as the banking system shut down, halting the functioning of sectors of the economy. The junta then instituted a nightly ban on internet services and shut down mobile internet services, which is the main source of web access.

These measures lasted only three months. The internet is a major development factor of Myanmar’s economy (OBG 2019). In a context in which pandemic restrictions have increased the dependency of Myanmar’s economy on internet banking and ecommerce, many businesses require reliable internet access for their transactions. In 2020 alone, 38 per cent of Myanmar firms moved to online platforms, resulting in a 73 per cent increase in e-transactions (Chen 2021). The SAC also remains dependent on the internet for its surveillance efforts, which rely on platforms like Facebook. The dalan (pro-military civilian informants) have been deployed across the platform to monitor posts and activity, including in private groups (Duncan & Mendelson 2021).

Employing a strategy used by the government in 2020 to silence critical voices (Nyan Hlaing Lin 2020), the junta pressured mobile operators and internet service providers to restrict access to certain websites and also virtual private networks (VPNs) that can bypass internet filtering. In an attempt to develop a national intranet, the junta whitelisted more than 1,200 web services used for business purposes, such as internet banking and some social media apps like WhatsApp, Zoom and Instagram (Strangio 2021). In some conflict areas, the SAC ordered a total internet shutdown and sporadic mobile communications cuts.

The fact that the SAC has been applying the same measures previously used against the Arakan Army suggests it has yet to develop alternative strategies to limit digital disruption without incurring a socioeconomic toll (ICG 2021). The SAC also attempted to restrict internet access by raising the price of sim cards from USD1.50 to USD11 and internet services by 50 per cent. It also drafted a Cybersecurity Law to punish the use of VPNs, which has already been enforced, although it has yet to be passed as a law (Irrawaddy 2022a; Haffner 2022; Dobberstein 2022).

Since Facebook is banned and the use of VPNs is risky and does not get around dalan surveillance, the number of Facebook users has decreased as people move to safer encrypted apps. In early 2022, the number of active social media users dropped to about 38 per cent of the Myanmar population, against 53 per cent the previous year (Statistica 2022). Similarly, the number of Facebook users decreased to 21 million people one year after the coup as opposed to almost 28 million people—more than half of Myanmar’s 54 million population—just before the coup (NapoleonCat 2021, 2022). As of June 2022, the predominance of Facebook in social media traffic has dropped from 93 per cent to 77 per cent (Statcounter 2022). While direct comparison with figures from previous years should be made with caution, this general trend seems to reflect the realities of internet shutdowns, restrictions on certain social media platforms such as Facebook and the increased prices of mobile data connection. Some people fear being arrested with their smartphones and charged under the Cybersecurity Bill, so they delete Facebook and their VPN when taking their phone outside their home. The junta’s use of the Counter-Terrorism Law to seize the property of democracy supporters has led to the confiscation of more than 547 properties since the NUG’s declaration of war in September 2021 (Irrawaddy 2022b). As a result, fewer people express support for the NUG on Facebook. In addition, the junta continues to expand its control over cyberspace with the development of a national identity database and the adoption of a new sim card regulation, which requires users to register their sim cards with their national ID card number. This, combined with the fact that telecom providers are either controlled by the junta or believed to be controlled by military-aligned entities, enables the junta to control users’ personal data and arrest people more easily (RFA 2022).

As an illustration of military rule in cyberspace, the case of Facebook’s rise and decline in Myanmar shows how the junta has used a central part of cyberspace as a new terrain of authoritarian control, and how it has changed its tactics since the coup. After initially simply moving their crude propaganda and psychological warfare strategies into cyberspace and throttling internet connectivity to disrupt opposition communications, the junta have now imported new cyber-surveillance technologies from China, Russia, the United States, Israel and Sweden (Beech 2021). Nonetheless, the use of Facebook and social media and the internet in general has not been uncontested. The civil resistance and armed movements in Myanmar have adopted new technologies to push back military control of the Myanmar cyber-sphere.

The resistance fights back: Disruptive technologies v. authoritarian control

Despite the SAC’s fierce attempts to control cyberspace, democracy activists have so far been one step ahead in their use of new technologies. According to Ryan and Tran (2022), this has been possible because pro-democracy activists were able to sharpen their ‘digitalized capacity’ prior to the coup, through the development of training programs and advocacy campaigns directed towards social media platforms, government authorities and internet users. Building on these skills, the anti-coup movements harnessed the cyber-sphere for disruptive purposes: they have been successful in digitally organising protests, fundraising and sharing information about events inside the country, with each other and the world. While Facebook continues to be instrumental to the anti-coup movement, Myanmar’s digital activism has predominantly relied on other tools that require little knowledge or skill, such as free VPNs and encrypted messaging services.

In a review of the literature on digital activism, George and Leidner (2019) divide digital activism into three broad categories: digital spectatorship, digital transition activities and digital gladiatorial activities. They describe digital spectator activities as clicktivism, mentioning and assertion; digital transitional activities as e-funding, political consumerism, digital petitions and botivism; and digital gladiatorial activities as data activism, exposure and hacktivism. Hacktivism has been taken up by Myanmar democracy activists. Jordan (2002) has described hacktivism as the attempt to achieve social and political objectives through hacking. George and Leidner (2019) further differentiate hacktivists into cyberterrorists, civic hackers and patriotic hackers. Myanmar’s nascent hacktivist political activism is a little of each of these subcategories, with the aim being to disable the regime’s ability to govern and to spread propaganda. This section discusses, in particular, the use of social media for counterpropaganda and real-time communication, and the effectiveness of digital gladiatorial activities such as hacktivism and doxing, and digital transitional methods of e-financing, in preventing the SAC from consolidating its control on the ground.

Counterpropaganda and real-time communication

The use of social media makes the regime’s censorship of media outlets and restrictions of social media platforms less effective by publishing evidence that is contrary to the regime’s statements and accounts. For example, images of deserted cities posted on Facebook counter the regime’s illustrations in media outlets showing congested streets during the nationwide ‘silent strikes’. Armed resistance groups routinely use Facebook pages to report battles and attacks in real time through photo and video uploads of fighting and human rights abuses. One group may have several pages. One of the reasons for the SAC’s attempted shutdown of the internet has been to try and stop information reaching rank and file soldiers so as to preserve morale and limit further defections (ICG 2021).

Social media apps have allowed widespread publishing of real-time military movements, numbers and weaponry. Different tools have been used in Yangon and Mandalay, mainly during the peak of the attacks. Some websites such as Myanmarmap.live³ have provided real-time map information. Facebook messenger groups have been used to get security information in various neighbourhoods and townships and to relay it to people directly in the line of advancing SAC columns.⁴ After the banning of Facebook, resistance groups have massively moved to encrypted apps such as Telegram and Signal to share sensitive information. The Fifth Column Telegram channel gathers and shares military intelligence information with resistance groups. The walkie talkie app Zello has also been used as a channel to communicate between trusted parties (as joining a Zello channel requires a recommendation from a group member). These tools provided grassroots-level information for resistance groups to organise protests, avoid arrests and attack military supporters—for example, when five police officers were killed on a train in Yangon (Myanmar Now 2021). In addition, people have been using them in their daily lives to plan safe travel routes.

Hacktivism and doxing

Hacktivism in Myanmar is used to block military propaganda by preventing public access to government websites and, in some cases, display a protest message. For instance, the government-owned news websites Global New Light of Myanmar and Myanmar Digital News have been targeted, with messages such as ‘Stop arresting people illegally at midnight; Save Myanmar’. Although hacktivism is a ‘gladiatorial’ activity with the ability to have the most significant effects upon the regime’s ability to govern and propagandise, as yet the Myanmar resistance forces lack the capacity to create mass DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks and so hacktivism has been largely symbolic.

Doxing has proven a more successful, albeit small-scale, resistance tactic. Doxing is a social punishment strategy used in cyberspace, which consists of naming and shaming individuals affiliated with the junta or related to military officers. This social punishment campaign, which started soon after the coup, works as a kind of retribution for the junta’s past social exclusion of democracy activists that goes far beyond cyberbullying.

Anonymous activists have set up a database listing targets in the armed forces, their locations, photographs and the type of offence they have committed. Individuals have also created Facebook groups and viral posts that publish the personal details of family members of military officers and pro-regime celebrities. In addition to the widespread incitement to bully senior officers’ children,⁵ the tactic allowed the boycott of military-linked businesses and had the effect of decreasing the legitimacy of the junta by shrinking the number of influential and well-known Burmese (such as entertainers or social media influencers) willing to be associated with them (Sithu Aung Myint 2021). The deportation and freezing of assets of military family members and associates living abroad has been a key motivation for the diaspora movement engaging in doxing (McMichael 2021). For instance, the Australian Government launched an investigation into junta relatives living in Australia following calls from human rights advocates and Burmese Australians who prepared a list naming 15 relatives of senior junta members (Galloway & McKenzie 2021).

Doxing has also had concrete effects on the ground, including the murder of at least four military supporters and informants as the direct result of revealing their identity and personal details on Facebook. In November 2021, local armed groups killed two military informants and a ward administrator as well as a teacher who did not join the CDM (Irrawaddy 2021a; Maung Maung Thein 2021). In addition to exposing the teacher’s identity, resistance supporters specifically asked her to stop collaborating with the military (Maung Maung Thein 2021).

Reliable sources indicate that, in some cases, people have been wrongly identified as pro-military, with real-life consequences. For instance, the supposed addresses of Myanmar Air Force Officers were published in a public Facebook group. This wrongly led to the bombing of a residence that was later identified as that of a local singer (Ko Korozan 2022). In addition, this climate of social punishment has trickled down to civilians, with increased tensions and polarisation, which the youth feel strongly (Chiu 2022). The fear of being publicly shamed and labelled as pro-military causes social anxiety and results in self-censorship: people can be ostracised simply for using Facebook to share their intention to study abroad or go back to university (Chiu 2022).

Doxing has been a small-scale but effective strategy deployed by activists inside and outside the country, and has also been a deadly tactic used by the SAC’s intelligence apparatus to hunt pro-democracy supporters. The identity and details of active resistance supporters have been exposed on social media, leading to their arrests, and there are credible reports of extrajudicial killings.⁶

One of the biggest recent changes is the use of Telegram channels by both pro-democracy and pro-military groups. A Telegram channel allows its owner to broadcast messages to an unlimited number of subscribers who cannot send their own messages—unless the channel owner links it to a discussion group and enables comments. While the pro-resistance channel ‘Digging SAC’ is mainly used to share information, the pro-military channels ‘Han Nyein Oo’ and ‘Ko Lu Ngwe’ are used to crowdsource information about pro-democracy activists through their subscribers, the online dalans, who can safely denounce members of the resistance through a private account created for this purpose. Members of the resistance have been arrested or killed through these channels. For instance, two National League for Democracy supporters were killed in Mandalay in response to a pro-military militia’s launch of a counterinsurgency operation circulated on the Han Nyein Oo channel (Irrawaddy 2022d).

While doxing has had a concrete impact and sometimes led to deaths, its effectiveness in undermining the junta’s consolidation is limited because of its infrequent and small-scale uses and also because this tactic is used against the resistance itself. Digital financing represents the real game changer in the short term as it offers a new frontier.

Digital financing

Digital financing is used to fund the resistance against the coup, both non-violent and violent, through three main avenues: the parallel government, grassroots actors and, more recently, through click-to-donate websites and apps.

The NUG is able to finance the resistance movement through its innovative use of crowdfunding. In late 2021, the NUG announced a target budget of about USD800 million (MMK1.4 trillion) to cover social and humanitarian support, including health care, education, welfare and funding for striking civil servants as well as defecting military personnel and police officers (Nachemson 2021; Irrawaddy 2021b). This budget did not officially include defence spending, but, in June 2022, the NUG declared that it had already spent over 45 million—about 95 per cent of its available funds—on arming PDFs. More money is desperately needed, however, as funding the armed resistance would require at least USD10 million monthly (Irrawaddy 2022f).

The alternative government was able to raise this money through innovative initiatives, such as the purchase of lottery ticket sales, bonds, participating in a ‘voluntary tax’ regime, and through sales of military property shares and cryptocurrency. The online lottery sale pilot scheme launched in August 2021 raised USD8 million. The bond sale began in November 2021, with USD2 million worth of bonds sold within the first two hours (Nachemson 2021). The voluntary tax, which can be paid online through a voluntary self-assessment process, raised about USD150,000 in a month (Mizzima 2021; Nyan Hlaing Lin 2021). The Ministry of Finance also launched an unexpected scheme at the end of April 2022 whereby properties owned by military leaders would be reclaimed and sold in shares to support the revolution. In the first three days that Min Aung Hlaing’s residence was put on sale for USD10 million (a third of its value), USD2 million was raised in the sale of shares (Irrawaddy 2022e). Such a fundraising move is revolutionary in that it is simultaneously delegitimising the junta, bestowing legitimacy on the NUG and potentially supporting violent action. Finally, the NUG encourages the use of cryptocurrency, which is hard to trace. The Ministry of Finance announced in December 2021 the use of the stable coin Tether as its official currency, to ensure the safety of donations made to the NUG (Al Jazeera 2021). Then, in June 2022, the NUG launched NUG Pay, a digital platform using a new blockchain digital currency, the Digital Myanmar Kyat. With this technology, the NUG is able to circumvent the formal banking sector without SAC interference (Abuza 2022).

In addition to NUG funding, the resistance movement is widely using grassroots fundraising techniques to support striking civil servants as well as local PDFs. Such grassroots fundraising is organised by individuals, celebrities and armed groups and includes platforms such as We Pledge CDM Myanmar, which receives donations supporting CDM participants and humanitarian aid. Digital wallet platforms, such as KBZ Pay, are widely used to support armed resistance. Any group can post its digital wallet ID or QR code on Facebook for donors to transfer money. It is not easy for the junta to trace such fund movements. However, in some cases, the use of transfer names like ‘Revolution’ or ‘PDF’ enabled the junta to identify several accounts and freeze them. To further crack down on people funding the anti-junta movement, the Central Bank announced a new restrictive regulation in September 2022 whereby mobile payments would be cancelled unless transfers were registered with the user’s correct identification details (GNLM 2022).

Donating money via digital wallet platforms has thus become increasingly risky. The junta has been charging NUG or PDF supporters with funding terrorism under the 2014 Counter-Terrorism Law. Almost 200 people have been prosecuted since the coup, and face up to 10 years imprisonment, no matter how small the donation (Irrawaddy 2022c). In one instance, two university students received a seven-year sentence for donating MMK5,000 or USD3 (Irrawaddy 2022c). Where funding for pro-democracy and armed resistance groups has been stopped by the SAC, some have turned to cryptocurrency. When Myanmar celebrity Htar Htet Htet’s digital wallet code was revealed by regime supporters in August 2021, she encouraged her followers to make donations to the NUG through different countries and platforms, which include Binance, Bitcoin and PayPal. While the use of NUG Pay is increasing among NUG supporters, KBZ Pay remains the main payment method. Responding to increasing challenges in accessing, transferring and raising funds in Myanmar, the PDFs have instituted other innovative fundraising systems that rely on internet advertising revenue rather than on individual donations. Revenue is generated through the YouTube channels views and likes as well as through click-to-donate websites. Users typically generate a donation to the website owner by clicking on ads without spending their own money. While each donation only generates a few cents, the objective is to accrue enough clicks to produce significant amounts. Donations are encouraged on Facebook’s Click2donate page, which also shares daily reports of funds raised by a total of 10 sites. Facebook is still used for the promotion of this innovative crowdfunding system, which offers a much safer way to donate to the resistance and generates a significant amount daily. For example, on 5 May 2022 alone, almost USD10,000 was generated. Tech savvy resistance youth have also developed several click-to-donate apps—for instance, the news app ‘Tha Din’ and the gaming app ‘The PDF Game’—whereby the user generates a donation each time an ad shows up as the app is loading. These new fundraising strategies represent a much safer option than posting a QR code on a Facebook account, which could easily be traced if the post became viral. It is also a simple act, which does not cost anything to the user but can make a significant difference when used collectively. Tapping into the global advertising networks moves resistance funding into the mainstream and provides an ongoing and passive source of income.

Despite continuous attempts to repress the use of cyberspace, the junta has not been able to stop digital financing because they do not have the capacity to shut down the internet, which continues to be used by a highly creative pro-democracy resistance. Yet, the impact of digital financing is beyond cyberspace as it provides the resistance with more capacity to buy weapons and, therefore, has the potential to directly influence the result of the war on the ground.

Conclusion

Counterinsurgency strategies have proved too costly for the junta to implement digitally as for the moment, it inhibits their economy and banking system. By employing innovative digital techniques that go beyond Facebook’s quasi-monopoly to maintain its access to information and sustain the resistance movement, pro-democracy groups have been able to blunt the pro-totalitarianism military’s fear-making apparatus that includes its own propaganda, surveillance and censorship methods. At this early stage of disruptive technology use in the developing cyber-world of Myanmar, connectivity to the internet is critical for the resistance movement to access funds through digital financing and to communicate through social media. In the short and medium term, digital financing of the resistance has the potential to affect the outcome on the physical battleground: the PDFs are better armed this year and the junta is unable to consolidate its coup.

But all authoritarian regimes have been confronted with these new opportunities for democracy activism. The 2011 Arab Spring movement is considered the first social media–enabled resistance movement, but theorists have written on the formation of such virtual communities in terms of ‘Slacktivism’, an ultimately ineffective form of protest or adjunct to physical resistance. We only need to look to Myanmar’s northern border to see how authoritarian governments over time are mastering these tools to building their own cyberworlds. In the Chinese Splinternet, for example, an authoritarian metaverse is being created that is as tightly bound and defended as their physical territories (Griffiths 2019).

The junta has studied longstanding autocracies such as China and Russia to understand how they have been able to neutralise the power of the internet and social media to resist their rule and to turn it into an extension of their social control. As a result, the regime is working hard on making the everyday use of the internet and social media too expensive and risky. The junta can buy spyware and other tools and start creating its own internet. The purchase of new cyber-surveillance technologies is ongoing, as illustrated by the visit in early April of a private open-source intelligence expert from Russia selling a public opinion monitoring system on social media, Telegram channels and the darknet (IO 2022). This might explain the internet shutdown that affected the whole country mid-March. We should expect more measures designed to deny Burmese citizens access to the cyber-world as the junta learns to navigate and create their own cyber-sphere. Techno-totalitarianism may eventually win in Myanmar, as it is winning in its more cyber-developed neighbour China. But, until a time comes when the junta is able to control access to cyberspace, Myanmar activists will continue to use social media and the internet not just to organise and publicise alternate politics and visions of the future, but also to dull the resonance of the regime’s propaganda. Last but not least, with the ability to digitally fund armed resistance in the physical battlefield, cyberspace offers ways, if only in the short term, to even up the stakes on the ground.

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