Episode #442: A Scanner Darkly
RELEASE DATE: DECEMBER 4, 2025
Yin Maung, a Myanmar-born digital-rights researcher working with Aung Media, works on Myanmar-focused digital security issues across the Asia-Pacific region. His recent research examines how non-consensual, intimate images have been weaponized in the post-coup environment. His perspective is grounded in years of engagement with online rights, and his insights reveal a social crisis that links together gender, power, and political repression.
Yin Maung situates this crisis within Myanmar’s dramatic digital transformation. In 2011, only one percent of Myanmar’s population had internet access; by 2023, the number had skyrocketed to forty-four percent. This unprecedented leap created a society that went online faster than it could develop norms, protections, or regulations to keep users safe. He describes how, during the COVID-19 period, online communication and business activity expanded sharply, but digital literacy, privacy understandings, and security practices did not keep pace. The result, he explains, is a population thrust into digital dependence without the accompanying safeguards, a situation that became volatile in a politically repressive environment.
After the 2021 coup, women became more visible in the digital sphere. Many who before had not spoken out politically used social media to express political opposition and to support the revolution from inside and outside the country. But that visibility entailed serious risks. Yin Maung explains that female activists became targets of harassment by male online users supporting the military. Their posts, images, and political expressions became raw material for intimidation. Doxing—public exposure of personal information—emerged as the most common and dangerous tactic. Names, national ID numbers, addresses, and workplace information were circulated in pro-military Telegram channels, accompanied by accusations that these women were collaborating with the anti-junta resistance. These accusations invited arrests by security forces, creating a direct pipeline between online abuse and physical harm.
“Non-consensual pornography”—what the research team terms intimate images used without permission—was another harassment weapon. The phenomenon, he emphasizes, is multifaceted. It includes the leaking of private photos, the repurposing of personal images during doxing campaigns, explicit harassment, and the use of artificial intelligence tools to manipulate photographs into sexualized or pornographic content. Yin Maung acknowledges that abusive online behavior has not come solely from the military-aligned side; pro-democracy internet users have also engaged in doxing and the circulation of manipulated intimate images targeting individuals perceived as pro-military. And while his team does not have comparative data on the scale of abuses committed by each side, their research does show clearly that gendered attacks against women are both more intense and more prevalent on the military-aligned side.
The legal vacuum surrounding these crimes exacerbates the problem. Myanmar has no data-protection or privacy law. The only legal instrument occasionally cited in digital-harassment cases is Article 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law, a provision notorious for criminalizing speech and overwhelmingly used to suppress dissent rather than protect victims. Even cases involving stolen medical information, tax documents, or hacked accounts fall into a gray zone. Without a privacy law, even clear invasions of digital personal space lack explicit criminal definitions. As Yin Maung explains, Myanmar’s legal apparatus is not simply outdated—it has been weaponized by the military and cannot be relied upon to protect anyone, least of all dissidents or women.
Cultural dynamics complicate this crisis. Despite pockets of progressive thinking, especially among youth, Myanmar remains socially conservative regarding sexuality. When a woman becomes the victim of leaked intimate images, the dominant societal response is to blame her: she should not have taken such photos; she should have protected her privacy better; she invited the harm. These judgments reveal a longstanding pattern where shame attaches to the victim rather than the perpetrator. Conservative expectations around purity, modesty, and gender roles amplify the stigma, pushing many women into silence.
The consequences can be devastating. Victims face depression, fear, and in severe cases, suicidal thoughts. Opportunities for employment, social mobility, education, and community acceptance diminish. In one survey he cites, nearly half of respondents had experienced online harassment; three in ten suffered depression afterward; four in ten lived in fear; and one in ten experienced suicidal ideation. Meanwhile, perpetrators—usually men—rarely face social or legal penalties. In Myanmar’s current online culture, possessing or sharing intimate images acquired without consent is not widely condemned, and men who engage in such behavior seldom encounter stigma.
For years, there were no organizations dedicated to supporting victims of digital sexual abuse. Women’s-rights groups lacked training in digital harms, and digital-rights groups focused primarily on censorship and surveillance. But he notes that this is beginning to change. For example, as shared in a recent episode with Saijai Liangpunsakul, the organization Stop Online Harm has formal partnerships with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other major platforms. These partners provide escalated channels for content takedown, making it possible for Myanmar-based victims to remove non-consensual intimate images from major social networks more quickly. However, platforms like Telegram, which refuse to moderate content or cooperate with legal requests, remain major obstacles. Beyond takedown assistance, emerging groups now provide psychosocial counseling and trauma-informed support—a critical development given the emotional and psychological impact on victims.
Still, prevention remains exceedingly difficult. Once an intimate image is shared with another person, control over that content is inherently lost. But Yin Maung strongly rejects the common view that victims’ lack of digital literacy is the root cause. Instead, he points to gender inequality, political weaponization of online spaces, platform failures, and weak or nonexistent legal protections. Digital literacy programs are valuable, but they must empower women rather than blame them. He argues for broad gender-focused education, particularly targeting men, to help them understand the harm these actions cause and to shift cultural attitudes about shame, responsibility, and consent.
He also emphasizes the need for closer collaboration between digital-rights organizations and women’s-rights groups—two sectors that have historically operated separately. Without intersectional cooperation, each side’s efforts remain incomplete. Similarly, he calls for stronger advocacy toward platform accountability, pushing companies to play a more active role in protecting vulnerable users.
The conversation turns to the large population of Burmese migrants in Thailand, many of whom fled the coup and may also be victims of online sexual abuse. Thailand, like Myanmar, lacks specific legislation banning non-consensual pornography. As far as he knows, no advocacy efforts have yet been directed at Thai policymakers regarding this issue. This absence reflects the urgent priorities of migrant-support groups, which focus primarily on basic rights, documentation, workplace exploitation, and policing abuses such as illegal phone searches. Migrants without legal documentation remain especially vulnerable, unable to invoke even the minimal protections Thai law might offer. Addressing digital-rights violations in this population would require integrating these concerns into broader migrant-rights advocacy—something still largely unexplored.
Despite the entrenched problems, Yin Maung expresses cautious optimism. Already, the post-coup period has accelerated shifts in gender norms and political participation. Images of men wearing women’s longyi in solidarity after the coup, he notes, symbolized a broader willingness to embrace feminist principles in political struggle. This cultural softening toward gender equality, he argues, provides fertile ground for changing public attitudes toward non-consensual intimate images, even if laws are slow to catch up. If society learns to see victims without judgment and refuses to consume leaked images as entertainment or scandal, the harm inflicted by perpetrators and exploitative platforms would diminish dramatically.
For his long-term vision, Yin Maung sees a future grounded in principled digital rights. He imagines a similar framework for Myanmar to the Philippines’ digital-rights declaration—a foundational document articulating human rights within the digital era. Even if Myanmar cannot currently enact or enforce legal protections, such a declaration could help civil society, activists, and local communities begin building shared norms that will one day guide laws in a more democratic future.
In closing, he reflects on his role as a man researching and advocating for an issue that disproportionately affects women. At first, he wondered whether it was his place to do so. But he explains that his team, composed mostly of men, ultimately recognized a broader responsibility. Gender-based oppression cannot be addressed by women alone. Men must participate in dismantling the structures that perpetuate harm. He frames feminism not as a conflict between genders but as a commitment to defending those who are systematically oppressed. His final message underscores solidarity, responsibility, and collective action, an insistence that meaningful change requires all people, not only women, to push for a safer digital future. “Feminism is not about men and women or women only, right? Feminism is about protecting people who are systematically being oppressed.”