Hello,

In collaboration with OTF Fellow Phyu Kyaw, we published a report on the recent blocking of 174 domains in Myanmar.

This report is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2020-myanmar-blocks-websites-amid-covid19/

In March 2020, ISPs in Myanmar received a directive from authorities to block access to 230 websites, but this list of sites hasn't been publicly disclosed.

Telenor Myanmar revealed that this list includes websites that are considered to spread "fake news" around COVID-19.

We analyzed OONI measurements collected from Myanmar and confirmed the DNS based blocking of 174 domains on Telenor Myanmar (many of these sites are blocked on other local networks too).

The blocking appears to be implemented at the DNS level because OONI measurements show that Telenor Myanmar returned the IP addresses of a Digital Ocean machine hosting a block page, instead of the real IP of the host.

Many of the blocked domains include news outlets, some of which are based in Rakhine. Several ethnic media websites are among those confirmed blocked.

Under the "blocked news outlets" section of our report, we compare the confirmed blocked news websites with the Myanmar Press Council's "fake news" list, to see how many of the blocked sites were included in that list.

As most of the blocked news websites are not included in the official "fake news" list, transparency around which URLs are specifically blocked (especially when they involve the sites of vulnerable communities) and why/how they are viewed as “fake news” is essential, particularly amid a global pandemic when access to information is crucial.

In our report, we list the full list of blocked sites in the appendix, we share relevant OONI measurements for the blocked news outlets, and we link to a CSV file that contains all of the raw OONI measurements pertaining to all of the blocked sites (which can otherwise be found through OONI Explorer: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2020-05-07&probe_cc=MM&test_n...).

Please help share this research: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1258042964040876032

Thanks,

~ OONI team.