When Yarema Dukh arrange Ukraine’s official Twitter account in 2016, he knew that social media was the easiest way for his nation to get its message out.

“We never had the means like the Russians to found multinational media like RT or Sputnik,” the previous authorities communications adviser instructed AFP over the cellphone from Kyiv.

Since Russia’s full invasion final month, the Kyiv authorities has used social media to focus on atrocities, concern messages of defiance and even share a joke or two.

Young Ukrainians have used TikTok to chronicle life underneath Russian siege and tech fanatics have commandeered Telegram channels to organise donations of cryptocurrency.

On the opposite hand, Russia has launched an onslaught in opposition to Western tech companies and all however ended free speech on-line.

The Ukraine battle marks the enlargement of social media in conflicts from a instrument of the outsider to a genuinely ubiquitous presence.

But the tortuous historical past of its relations with protest actions and governments — from 2011’s Arab Spring to Myanmar as we speak — suggests Ukraine must combat to carry on to its positive aspects.

Amplifying the message 

Back in 2011, Facebook was removed from the behemoth it’s as we speak and Twitter barely registered in lots of nations.

“We were fighting to carve out a space in the margins,” mentioned Hossam El-Hamalawy, an Egyptian activist who grew to become a distinguished voice through the Arab Spring protests.

The revolts throughout the Middle East and North Africa grew to become referred to as the “Facebook revolution” however the jury remains to be out on its total function.

Hamalawy mentioned social media’s actual energy was not as an organising instrument however as a manner of amplifying the message.

“I knew that anything I wrote on Twitter would get picked up (by mainstream media),” he instructed AFP from his residence in Berlin.

In the early 2010s in Ukraine, Dukh says the preferred social media was a running a blog platform referred to as LiveJournal.

But then a journalist posted a message on his Facebook in 2014 promising to launch an anti-government rally if he obtained 1,000 replies.

When he obtained sufficient replies, he went to Maidan sq. within the coronary heart of Kyiv and launched a protest that introduced down the pro-Russian authorities.

The publicity additionally helped Facebook turn out to be the primary social community by far in Ukraine.

During this era, the US tech big was completely satisfied to embrace its affiliation with outsiders and protesters.

Company boss Mark Zuckerberg wrote in 2012 that the agency was not serious about earnings however somewhat in empowering individuals to hold out social change.

However, social media firms had been already in a way more advanced place.

Extremely naive

Burmese journalist Thin Lei Win mentioned 2012 was the second when Facebook “became the internet” in Myanmar.

“Everything was on Facebook and everybody was sharing everything,” she instructed AFP.

But a few of the messages being shared had been incendiary, spreading false data that stoked violence between Buddhist nationalists and the Muslim Rohingya minority.

By 2018, a UN rapporteur referred to as the platform a “beast” and accused it of inciting racial hatred.

The wheels got here off in Egypt too, the place faction combating amongst protesters on the road was mirrored by bitter feuds on-line.

Protest chief Wael Ghonim, whose Facebook messages had helped to galvanise the motion, instructed US broadcaster PBS in 2018 that he quickly grew to become a goal of on-line disinformation.

“I was extremely naive,” he mentioned, “thinking that these are liberating tools.”

Meanwhile in Ukraine, the Maidan revolution was additionally turning bitter.

Moscow had used it as a pretext for annexing Crimea and sowing unrest in Ukraine’s east.

Dukh, as a brand new recruit within the authorities’s communications crew, discovered himself battling Russian troll farms.

Three-finger salute 

Activists in Arab Spring nations now lament how the platforms they as soon as lauded have been retooled to serve the highly effective.

A gaggle of NGOs wrote an open letter to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube final yr accusing them of supporting repression by systematically shutting accounts of dissidents throughout the area.

In Myanmar, a army junta seized energy in a coup early final yr, ending a number of years of liberalisation.

Dissent rapidly unfold throughout social media with the three-finger salute borrowed from the “Hunger Games” motion pictures proving common.

But Thin Lei Win mentioned the authorities had been conscious that Burmese individuals had been enthusiastic sharers and commenced stopping individuals within the streets and demanding to see their telephones.

“If you had posted anything on your social media critical of the junta or supportive of the NUG (National Unity Government) you could be arrested,” she mentioned.

Whack-a-mole

Facebook and different platforms closed accounts of the Burmese generals shortly after the coup and, based on Thin Lei Win, established platforms have massively improved their file with disinformation.

Thin Lei Win and activist teams level out that the generals have since hopped on to different networks and their messages nonetheless get by way of.

“It’s like whack-a-mole, you close something, something else pops up,” mentioned Thin Lei Win.

Younger firms like TikTok and Telegram have been criticised for persevering with to host Burmese army propaganda.

In Ukraine too, TikTok and Telegram have each been accused of failing to deal with Russian disinformation.

But Dukh, who left the Ukrainian authorities in 2019, continues to see the constructive aspect of social media.

He mentioned Ukraine had learnt classes from its years of coping with Russian disinformation and will share them with the world.

“We are good learners and I hope after the victory we’ll be good teachers as well,” he mentioned.