Burmese influencer Han Nyein Oo rose to prominence in 2020, posting memes and gossip about Burmese celebrities on Facebook to an audience that had grown to several hundred thousand people in Myanmar by early 2021. When the country’s military seized power in February, he rocketed to the right and became a full-blooded supporter of the junta, which has killed more than 1,500 people and arrested thousands more in bloody repression.
He was soon banned from Facebook for violating the terms of service, so he moved to Telegram, the encrypted messaging app and social sharing platform. There he posted statements of support for the military, graphics of murdered civilians and manipulated pornographic images claiming to be female opposition figures. Often these were cross-posted in other channels operated by a network of pro-junta influencers, reaching tens of thousands of users.
This year, Han Nyein Oo switched to direct threats. Opponents of the junta planned to celebrate the anniversary of the coup on February 1 with a “silent strike”, closing businesses and staying home to leave the streets deserted. On his Telegram channel, Han Nyein Oo was furious, asking his followers to send him photos of stores and businesses that were planning to close. They obliged and he started posting the images and addresses to his 100,000 followers. The police searched dozens of properties. Han Nyein Oo claimed credit. He did not respond to a request for comment.
“That was the beginning of the doxing campaign,” said Wai Phyo Myint, a Burmese digital rights activist. “Since then, there has been an escalation.”
Over the past eight months, Han Nyein Oo’s Telegram channels and those of other pro-coup figures, including self-defining journalist Thazin Oo and influencers Kyaw Swar and Sergeant Phoe Si, have intoxicated hundreds of people whom they accuse of taking sides with the resistance movement, from high-profile celebrities to small business owners and students. Dozens have since been arrested or killed in vigilante violence.
Han Nyein Oo’s channel was taken off the air in March after it was reported to have broken Telegram’s rules on the distribution of pornography, but within days he had started another channel. It now has more than 70,000 followers.
Telegram’s doxing problem goes way beyond Myanmar. WIRED spoke to activists and experts in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe who said the platform ignored their warnings about an epidemic of politically motivated doxing, which allowed dangerous content to spread, leading to harassment, violence and deaths .
In a Telegram message, company spokesperson Remi Vaughn said: “Since launch, Telegram has actively moderated malicious content on its platform, including publishing private information. Our moderators proactively monitor public areas of the app and accept user reports to remove content that violates our terms.”
Telegram, which now claims more than 700 million active users worldwide, has a publicly stated philosophy that private communications should be kept out of the reach of governments. That has made it popular among people living under authoritarian regimes around the world (and among conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and “sovereign citizens” in democratic countries).
