TikTok starts banning accounts in Myanmar to curb misinformation

The use of TikTok by government soldiers in the country gained traction even as Facebook in February announced that it was banning the Myanmar's military as well as other state-controlled entities from both Facebook and Instagram.

New Delhi: With the Myanmar military using TikTok to spread pro-government propaganda and threaten the protesters, the short video-sharing platform has started banning some accounts in the country in a bid to curb the spread of misinformation.

The use of TikTok by government soldiers in the country gained traction even as Facebook in February announced that it was banning the Myanmar’s military as well as other state-controlled entities from both Facebook and Instagram.

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A TikTok spokesperson told The Verge that the “promotion of hate, violence and misinformation has absolutely no place” on the platform.

“When we identified the rapidly escalating situation in Myanmar, we quickly expanded our dedicated resources and further stepped up efforts to remove violative content. We aggressively banned numerous accounts and devices that we identified promoting dangerous content at scale,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report on Saturday.

But Rest of World reported that TikTok has acknowledged that it should have been swifter in taking action against videos that spread threats.

Even as people in Myanmar continue to protest the February 1 coup, more than 200 protesters have been killed in firings by security forces across the country, while over 600 other suffered serious injuries, some life threatening.

New corruption allegations against Aung Sang Suu Kyi, the detained former de-facto leader of Myanmar, were aired on national television last week.

The coup was staged as the military alleged massive voting fraud in the 2020 general elections, which saw Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy win a majority of seats in both Houses of the Parliament.