Facebook faces a reckoning in Myanmar after blocked by military

FILE PHOTO: Protesters from Myanmar residing in Japan raise their fists and hold a poster depicting Aung San Suu Kyi during a rally against Myanmar's military, after it seized power from a democratically elected civilian government and arrested Suu Kyi, outside Foreign Ministry in Tokyo, Japan February 3, 2021. REUTERS/Issei Kato

(Reuters) - The Myanmar military's shutdown of Facebook access following the ouster of the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi caps years of tension between the social media company and the most powerful institution in a nation where Facebook is used by half the population.

The junta on Wednesday banned Facebook Inc until at least Sunday after the regime's opponents began using it to organize. A new civil disobedience page had gained nearly 200,000 followers and the support of Burmese celebrities in the days after the coup, while a related hashtag was used millions of times.