FACEBOOK BANS MYANMAR’S MILITARY

Facebook banned Myanmar’s military and military-controlled state media entities from its platform, the company said Wednesday evening, in the wake of a coup earlier this month.

The update, including a ban on ads from commercial entities linked to the military, follows restrictions Facebook put in place to reduce the distribution of content of pages run by Myanmar’s military after the country’s democratic government was overthrown.

“Events since the February 1 coup, including deadly violence, have precipitated a need for this ban. We believe the risks of allowing the Tatmadaw on Facebook and Instagram are too great,” Facebook’s director of policy for Asia-Pacific emerging countries, Rafael Frankel, said in the updated blog post, referring to Myanmar’s military.