The quake was the latest blow for the impoverished Southeast Asian country of 53 million, following a 2021 coup that returned the military to power and devastated its economy after a decade of development and tentative democracy.
Grassroots group Digital Insight Lab, which runs Facebook pages countering misinformation and hate speech in Myanmar, said it had seen viral posts claiming to show devastation even though the videos were shot in Syria and Malaysia, or created from scratch by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
"Many of these reports repurpose photos and videos from unrelated past incidents, while others leverage AI-generated content to fabricate false narratives," said research officer Windy, who used a pseudonym for safety.
Misinformation and disinformation are common on social media following catastrophes, digital experts say, be it miscaptioned images, fake videos or false narratives about rescue efforts.
"When you have mis- and disinformation, it can escalate panic, you can delay your evacuation. It can undermine the trust that you have in emergency services. It can also be really distracting," said Jeanette Elsworth, head of communications at the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
After Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the United States last year, false rumours spread accusing the government of channelling federal disaster funds to illegal migrants.
When a massive quake hit Turkiye and Syria in 2023, killing more than 51,000 people, fraudsters uploaded old videos of tsunamis in Japan and Greenland, claiming it was real-time footage from the new disaster zone.
"We have a Wild West now where virtually anything goes. There are very few laws regulating content online, and the tech companies aren't doing very much to protect people," West, of the Brookings Institution, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
More than US$20 billion was made in 2024 through advertising revenues shared between social platforms and content creators, according to tech policy group What To Fix.
Content creators use platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to get a share of revenue from the ads displayed with their posts, said founder Victoire Rio, who has also worked in Myanmar researching misinformation.
She said the model incentivises creators to produce viral posts, even if they are false or AI-generated, because the more views and shares they attract, the more money they make.
A 2021 study by fact-checking firm NewsGuard and analytics company Comscore said misinformation websites reaped US$2.6 billion from digital advertising each year.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, accounts for more than 60 per cent of the social advertising market and had over 3.1 million creator accounts in 2024, a 55 per cent increase on the previous year, according to What To Fix.
"In the current context in Myanmar, a vast volume of the disinformation you're seeing circulate is financially motivated," Rio said.
Meta said they removed posts that violated their policies, working with partners to debunk false Sclaims and move such content down the feed "so fewer people see it".
TikTok said it banned misleading and false content on its platform and proactively removed inaccurate posts after the Myanmar quake, directing users to credible sources.
It said it had trained moderators and fact-checking partners working in 50+ languages.
Rio said the lack of information coming out of Myanmar due to Internet shutdowns was also fuelling misinformation.
Htaike Htaike Aung, director of the Myanmar Internet Project, which tracks the country's Internet blackouts, said the situation was putting lives at risk.
"It's hindering a lot of aid efforts. Access to information at this time is a life and death situation."
* The writer is from Reuters
