Four “keyboard fighters” in Myanmar discuss their online activism on Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram to combat the regime's misinfo campaigns and propaganda
A group of young Burmese are braving blackouts and crackdowns to make sure the world stays focused on what's happening in their country. Tweets: @restofworld , @ravi_hiranand , @emilyfishbein11 , @emilyfishbein11 , @emilyfishbein11 , @emilyfishbein11 , @emilyfishbein11 , @emilyfishbein11 , and @cengizyar Tweets: @restofworld : “'Keyboard fighter' used to have negative connotations. People used to associate it with internet trolls. But now, with this movement, we're fighting online. The military uses propaganda online, and we have to find a way to combat that” https://restofworld.org/... Ravi / @ravi_hiranand : Meet the young activists braving blackouts and crackdowns to tell the world what's happening in Myanmar https://restofworld.org/... @restofworld Emily Fishbein / @emilyfishbein11 : “My friends & I decided to use our social media experience to bring international attention to #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar. As K-pop & idol fans, we're very used to social media and Twitter” - Admin of Twitter Team for the Revolution @NuNuLusan & I report https://restofworld.org/... Emily Fishbein / @emilyfishbein11 : “We wanted to promote hashtags about the coup so they would be trending on Twitter...We created 2 major hashtags, #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar and #[Date]Coup, & we encouraged our followers to tweet using them each day” 19 y/o K-Pop fan @NuNuLusan & I report https://restofworld.org/... Emily Fishbein / @emilyfishbein11 : “We K-pop fandom used Twitter way before the coup...It's the fastest way to get international attention and we want the world to know #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar. If Myanmar's issues trend worldwide, ordinary people will notice.” By @NuNuLusan & me https://restofworld.org/... Emily Fishbein / @emilyfishbein11 : “It's not shameful to be called a keyboard warrior anymore.” @NuNuLusan & I interviewed four “Keyboard fighters” who are battling with all their might to keep #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar in the global consciousness. Here are their stories. https://restofworld.org/... Emily Fishbein / @emilyfishbein11 : “I don't know what hashtags are...Some posts say, ‘Please copy & share.’ I read it first and if I like it and think it's good, I share it” - 57 y/o teacher & self-desribed keyboard fighter by @NuNuLusan & me #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar https://restofworld.org/... Emily Fishbein / @emilyfishbein11 : “We already had a large following from 2 Facebook pages we administered, Kimjuncotton's Kingdom & BJYX Myanmar Fan Club...We established the Facebook page Twitter Team for Revolution. We run a Telegram channel with the same name too.” @NuNuLusan & I report https://restofworld.org/... Cengiz / @cengizyar : Congregating on Twitter, Facebook groups, and Telegram channels, Myanmar's “keyboard fighters” have built a dynamic citizen movement to counter the regime's misinformation operations and propaganda. @NuNuLusan & @EmilyFishbein11 for @restofworld https://restofworld.org/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook is the internet in Myanmar — the 2018 coverage showed the platform became synonymous with the web itself and leaned on civil society groups to police rumors. That dependency set up today's asymmetry: after the coup, Facebook deleted the military's main page for incitement (February 2021), while the junta answered with thousands of soldier-run fake accounts alleging fraud and denouncing protesters (November 2021 reporting).
The 'keyboard fighters' profiled here are the civilian half of that same war — young Burmese running #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar and date-stamped coup hashtags across Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram. The battleground they describe was built years earlier when affordable SIMs put Myanmar's farmers on Chinese smartphones and one platform.
First-order effects
- The activists' hashtag coordination competes directly against the junta's soldier-run fake accounts for trending space on Facebook and Twitter — visibility, not persuasion, is the immediate prize.
- Platform enforcement cuts both ways in real time: Facebook's removal of the military's main page handed the opposition an advantage that Telegram's looser moderation does not replicate.
Second-order effects
- With Facebook hostile territory, pro-military networks migrated to Telegram channels — later used to doxx and share abusive images of women — forcing the keyboard fighters to defend people, not just narratives, across platforms with different rules.
- The junta's shift to coordinated inauthentic accounts raises the verification burden on volunteers and foreign journalists like the outlets amplifying them, pushing fact-checking work from platforms onto under-resourced civil society.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, information conflicts resolve into platform-by-platform fronts where each side concentrates on whichever service's moderation regime favors it — making distribution-layer policy a strategic variable in civil conflicts, not a neutral pipe.
- The structural lesson from Myanmar's arc is that whoever owns the dominant social layer inherits the country's information war — and outsources the moderating to volunteer networks when it cannot do it itself.
The trend: National information wars are fragmenting across platforms along moderation lines, with volunteer counter-disinformation networks becoming permanent infrastructure opposing state propaganda campaigns.