On February 12, 2020, as a part of a larger takedown, Facebook removed 13 accounts and 10 pages linked to MyTel, a Burmese telecommunications company indirectly owned by the Myanmar and Vietnamese militaries, for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Of the 23 total assets within the Burmese set, the DFRLab had access to six of the pages prior to the takedown. These six presented themselves as neutral special interest pages focused on mobile technology but targeted the commercial opponents of MyTel and its sister company, MyTelPay, as well MyTel competitors’ users.

This operation differed in one respect from previous commercial operations the DFRLab has encountered, such as the May 2019 takedown of assets related to the Israeli political marketing firm Archimedes Group and the December 2019 takedown of assets linked to Panda, an advertising agency in Georgia working on behalf of the Georgian government. While the actors in those earlier cases were profit-driven contracted services, they acted on behalf of a client. In the case of MyTel, it appeared that the pages linked to the telecommunication company were taking aim at the company’s own competitors as an indirect means of boosting its own brand and profit, rather than by selling “disinformation-as-a-service.”

In its announcement of the takedown, Facebook said:

The Page admins and account owners typically shared content in English and Burmese about alleged business failures and planned market exit of some service providers in Myanmar, and their alleged fraudulent activity against their customers. Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to two telecom providers — Mytel in Myanmar and Viettel in Vietnam — and Gapit Communications, a PR firm in Vietnam.

The DFRLab’s investigation found that the assets displayed several characteristics that pointed to coordinated activity, including similar post formatting conventions, identical content published within short timeframes of each other, and page administrators based in Vietnam and Myanmar. They also displayed evidence of inauthenticity, as they initially appeared set up as neutral special interest pages, and some may have artificially amplified their page likes.

Myanmar’s telecommunications sector

Myanmar is a late, but meteoric, entrant to the telecommunications sector. In 2011, the mobile penetration rates in the Southeast Asian country was sitting at only 2 percent, but after the government dismantled a monopoly held by the state-owned telecoms firm Myanmar Posts and Telecom (MPT) in 2013, the situation changed drastically. Additional operating licenses granted to Norway’s Telenor and the Qatar’s Ooredoo fostered competition and drove down communication costs and barriers to entry, and by 2018 Myanmar had more active sim-cards than citizens. Its mobile penetration rate of 80 percent edges out even developed countries like Germany (78.8 percent) and the United States (77 percent).

The surge in mobile phone use has also seen an increase in the use of mobile payment providers. Small grocers and supermarkets act as mobile payment agents, essentially replacing traditional ATM’s in the Burmese economy.

MyTel, a joint venture between commercial entities controlled by the Vietnamese and Burmese militaries, along with private conglomerate MNTH, was granted Myanmar’s fourth operator’s license early in 2017.

MyTel also launched its own mobile payment solution in June 2019, called MyTelPay, which tapped into its existing mobile phone userbase.

A schematic representation of the Burmese and Vietnamese military’s indirect ownership of MyTel and MyTelPay. (Source: @jean_leroux/DFRLab )

The assets

The network consisted of six assets posing as neutral special interest pages with a focus on mobile technology and lifehacks. None of the pages disclosed any affiliation with MyTel.